Musicatlas
Music
Of his works are know 6 madrigal books, 2 sacrae cantiones and 1 libro di responsoria.
(thanks Rocco Brancati <robra
mbox.vol.it>)
Life
Michael Canales <YozgalilanNetZero.Net> writes: He found his wife and the Duke of Anzio together in his marital bed. He was prince of Venoza and felt as though he could get away with it, so he had his men run the Duke (dressed in the woman’s blouse) through with halbreds and shot with muskettes. He saved the pleasure of murdering his wife himself. Some contemporary accounts have him disemboweling her, some have her both disemboweled and slit at the throat (jack the ripper style); all accounts suggest that this was not the wife’s first tryst, and that her beauty was topped only by her lack of sexual morality and her "mannish" courage. Lay monks ravished her corpse because of her fetching good looks (really, no kidding). I wrote an opera on the subject back in the early 1990’s. It is the only one of my three operas that has not been performed in its entirety. Gesualdo’s music, highly progressive in terms of harmony, imagine Wagner or Hugo Wolf in Madrigal form, has often been connected to the composer’s dark side. He eventually went insane with guilt over his deed, and in particular was perpetually constipated because of latent then overt horror over how he killed his wife. The actual cause of death was blood poisoning due to this contant state of constipation. (Sorry to be so graphic but it is unavoidable in any discussion of this great but highly disturbed musician.)