Don carlo gesualdo biography of donald

Don Carlo Gesualdo’s noble Naples family acquired the principality of Venosa in 1560. He was born around that same time and was an actual prince (as you will discover, only in title. His personality left a little to be desired). His uncle was Carlo Borromeo, who later became a saint, and his mother was Girolama, the niece of Pope Pius IV. Gesualdo came from a seriously well-connected and ridiculously wealthy family, and it’s no wonder that he may have felt a little entitlement here and there.He was a late-Renaissance lutenist, and also played the harpsichord and guitar. From all records, it seems that other than a couple of marriages and a few offspring, he was interested in little other than music. He had few friends and was prone to excesses of food and libation.But let’s pause for a moment and consider his marriages. Today’s soap operas have nothing on young Carlo. In 1586, 26-ish Carlo married his first cousin Maria d’Avalos, the daughter of the Marquis of Pescara. When she began a secret love affair with Fabrizio Carafa, the Duke of Andria, she was able to hide it from Carlo for about two years, although everyone else seemed to know. On October 16, 1590, at the Palazzo San Severo in Naples, when Carlo was supposed to be away on a hunting trip, the two were sufficiently indiscreet that Carlo, who’d made wooden copies of the keys to the palace, caught them in bed and murdered them. He left their mutilated bodies for all to see in front of the palace. Because he was a nobleman, he could not be prosecuted (imagine!), and to hide from the relatives of his wife or her lover, who were likely to want revenge, he fled to his castle at Venosa. There’s plenty of information about the murders, and it’s clear that Carlo was aided by his servants, who might also have participated in the murders, but who, at the very least, made the copies of the keys. The story g

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Gesualdo

frontispiece

The altarpiece of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Gesualdo. For a description and discussion of this painting, see pages 32-35.

Gesualdo The Man and His Music

GLENN WATKINS

P reface by

IGOR STRAVINSKY

Second Edition

CLARENDON PRESS • OXFORD 1991

Oxford University Press, Walton Street, Oxford 0X2 6DP Oxford New York Toronto Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi Petaling Jaya Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo Nairobi Dar es Salaam Cape Town Melbourne Auckland and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Oxford is a trade mark of Oxford University Press © Glenn bKatkins 1991

First edition 1973 Second edition 1991

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Preface Gesualdo di Venosa: New Perspectives by IGOR STRAVINSKY

M

usicians may yet save Gesualdo from musicologists, but certainly the latter have had the best of it until now. Even now he is academically unrespectable, still the crank of chromaticism, still rarely sung. Two new publications, Professor Watkins’s monograph and the CBS recording of the sixth book of madrigals, should help to scotch the prejudice of the scholars. Professor Watkins provides the composer with surrounding scenery not previously in view, and in which he does not fade but stands out more vividly, if in different colours, than before. The recording, on the other hand, corrects the view of the music as a case of samples, sim

On the night of October 16, 1590, a palace apartment near Piazza San Domenico Maggiore, in Naples, was the scene of a double murder so extravagantly vicious that people are still sifting through the evidence, more than four centuries later. The most reliable account of the crime comes from a delegation of Neapolitan officials, who inspected the apartment the following day. On the floor of the bedroom, they found the body of Don Fabrizio Carafa, the Duke of Andria, whom a contemporary described as a “model of beauty,” one of the handsomest young men of his time. The officials’ report stated that the Duke was wearing only “a woman’s nightdress with fringes at the bottom, with ruffs of black silk.” The corpse was “covered with blood and pierced with many wounds,” including a gunshot that had gone “straight through his elbow and even went through his breast, the sleeve of the above-mentioned shirt being scorched.” The visitors observed another gunshot wound, to the head—“a bit of the brain had oozed out”—and there were wounds on the “head, face, neck, chest, stomach, kidneys, arms, hands, and shoulders.” Underneath the corpse, they found a pattern of holes, “which seemed to have been made by swords which had passed through the body, penetrating deeply into the floor.”

Lying on the bed was the body of Donna Maria d’Avalos, the famously alluring wife of Don Carlo Gesualdo, the Prince of Venosa. Her throat had been cut and her nightshirt was drenched in blood. The officials noted other wounds, to her face, right arm, right hand, and torso. Interviews with eyewitnesses left no doubt about who was responsible for the murders. Gesualdo, a twenty-four-year-old man with a narrow face, had been seen entering the apartment with three men, shouting, “Kill that scoundrel, along with this harlot! Shall a Gesualdo be made a cuckold?” After a time, he reëmerged, his hands dripping with blood. The

Italian prince, composer and murderer (1566–1613)

Carlo Gesualdo da Venosa (between 8 March 1566 and 30 March 1566 – 8 September 1613) was an Italian nobleman and composer. Though both the Prince of Venosa and Count of Conza, he is better known for writing madrigals and pieces of sacred music that use a chromatic language not heard again until the late 19th century. He is also known for killing his first wife and her aristocratic lover upon finding them in flagrante delicto.

Biography

Early life

Gesualdo's family had acquired the principality of Venosa, in what is now the Province of Potenza, Southern Italy, in 1560. He was probably born on March 30, 1566, three years after his older brother, Luigi, though some sources have stated that he was born on March 8. Older sources give the year of birth as c. 1560 or 1561, but this is no longer accepted. A letter from Gesualdo's mother, Geronima Borromeo, indicates that the year is most likely 1566. Gesualdo's uncle was Carlo Borromeo, later Saint Charles Borromeo. His mother was the niece of Pope Pius IV.

Carlo was most likely born at Venosa, then part of the Kingdom of Naples, but little else is known about his early life. "His mother died when he was only seven, and at the request of his uncle Carlo Borromeo, for whom he was named, he was sent to Rome to be set on the path of an ecclesiastical career. There he was placed under the protection of his uncle Alfonso (d. 1603), then dean of the College of Cardinals, later unsuccessful pretender to the papacy, and ultimately Archbishop of Naples." His brother Luigi was to become the next