It’s an old story: wife has affair, husband catches pair
‘in flagrante delicto’ and violently murders them,
before fleeing for his life. Perhaps not. For this cuckolded
husband and double murderer was also one of the greatest
composers in Renaissance Italy, and is soon to hit our screens as
the subject of a no-expensespared biopic by the controversial
Italian film director, Bernado Bertolucci. Don Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, enjoyed huge notoriety
in his time due to his scandalous love life and his radical
musical style which, sensuous and wild, changed the face of the
previously restrained Italian madrigal. In a recent interview
with L a RepubblicaBertolucci himself commented, “Gesualdo,
with his prophetic fury, confused me from the first time I heard
him. I experienced a carrier of emotions that was almost
expressionist.” The great Italian conductor Claudio Abbado, long a fan of
Gesualdo, stated in the same article, “Gesualdo knew how to
transfigure suffering with previously unheard harmonies. He
exalted dissonance, rendering it an instrument of expression of
the strongest and saddest emotions. And in this way, he thrust
past the boundaries of his time”. And yet, until now, both Gesualdo and his works have been
almost completely forgotten. But not for long: Bernado
Bertolucci, of Last Tango in Paris and Stealing Beauty fame, has
finally admitted that he plans to complete what sources close to
him say is a tenyear project, that will reveal the life and music
of the unjustly forgotten Prince. The film is to be called
Inferno e Paradiso, or Heaven and Hell. The release date is still
under wraps, but reports in the Italian press suggest that the
first scenes, or “ciaks” as they are called in his
native Italy, are expected to be shot this month. So, what can we expect from the famoso Italian? Like his
subjectto- be, Bertolucci is no conservative; his notorious film
La Luna shocked the world with its theme of mother-son incest set
in the world of opera. Last Tango in Paris, the story of two
people who meet anonymously for sex in a Paris apartment, was no
less stunning or provocative. And his latest release, The
Dreamers, caused yet more headlines in September last year by
famously including an incestuous relationship between a young boy
and his virgin twin sister. When Twentieth Century Fox announced that they wanted to cut
some scenes involving sex and nudity in preparation for The
Dreamers’ release in America, Bertolucci was outraged,
allegedly accusing Fox of having “amputated and
mutilated” the film, and suggesting wryly that, “some
people obviously think the American public is immature”. Will Heaven and Hell be as controversial as the Italian’s
previous efforts? It certainly seems that the combination of
Gesualdo’s colourful love life and Bertolucci’s track
record will give ample opportunities for sparks to fly. Gesualdo’s unfaithful wife, Maria of Avalos, was
reputedly one of the most beautiful women in Italy, and when the
Prince killed both her and her courtly lover it caused
shock-waves in Neapolitan society which were recorded in many a
lamenting madrigal. However, his crime passionellewas forgotten
astonishingly quickly, and in 1594, a mere four years after the
dirty deed, he was married to Eleonora d’Este, of the
powerful Ferrarese Este family. His return to grace coincided with a very fruitful period of
madrigal writing which, with their deeply pained, repentant
texts, seem to mirror his anguished guilt. Bertolucci,as ever,
has a different and juicier interpretation: “It really
distresses me that, from which ever way you look at events, you
can’t escape the fact that Gesualdo’s most beautiful
music was composed after he murdered his wife. It is as if his
works were fertilized in the blood of his wife. Gesualdo loved
music too much, Maria loved love too much. I am convinced that
Gesualdo killed his wife because she stopped him from being
creative, deep down, and that he found the pretext of adultery to
free himself.” There’s clearly a lot more to the Prince of Venosa than
meets the eye, and anyone wishing to find out more could do worse
than to dig into either the second edition of Glenn Watkins’
masterly Gesualdo, or Dennis Arnold’s BBC Music Guidewhich
somehow manages to compress most of the content of the
Watkins’ tome into about fifty very readable pages. Those not wishing to burden themselves with literature can
always skip straight to the real thing and put on a CD; Gesualdo:
Madrigals, sung by the peerless French early-music group Arts
Florissants and conducted by William Christie, is one of the
best. As for Inferno e Paradiso: box office heaven or hell? Watch
this space.ARCHIVE: 0th week TT 2004
Filming with the Devil
