EIF: Death of Gesualdo

 Queen’s Hall, 15/8/2026

 The Gesualdo Six, Owain Park (music director), Bill Barclay (stage director)

Ever since I first heard the Gesualdo Six at the Lammermuir Festival, I have admired this superb vocal ensemble as they have developed into the finest small group of a capella singers in the world. Their debut at the EIF today marked another milestone in their extraordinary musical journey and will surely be seen as one of the highlights of this or any other Festival.

After their triumph with Secret Byrd in Haddington in 2023, the group has brought another theatrical event to this year’s EIF, The Death of Gesualdo, a series of tableaux vivants telling the remarkable story of Carlo Gesualdo da Venosa (1566-1613), prince, duke, murderer and composer. His extraordinarily chromatic vocal music, both sacred and secular, stands out as a remarkable phenomenon of the late Renaissance/early Baroque period, and his life story is as crazy as his music.

The Gesualdo Six (Guy James, Alasdair Austin, Joseph Wicks, Josh Cooter, Simon Grant and Owain Park) sang throughout, their words and music contributing to the story being told by a group of six actors and puppets, beautifully dressed in period costume and brilliantly directed by Bill Barclay and choreographed by Will Tuckett. My only caveat was that, from the Stalls, the sight lines of the Queen’s Hall prevented us from seeing much of the action clearly, as the stage level was the same as the audience.

The audience arrived in the hall to be met by dry ice and candlelight, and the whole performance was beautifully lit thereafter. The motet, ‘O Vos Omnes’, started the show off, as Gesualdo lay on his deathbed in 1613. A series of tableaux and stylised scenes took us through his childhood, coming of age, marriage and early manhood. The famous tale of his murder of his wife and her aristocratic lover, caught in flagrante, was brilliantly done, and thereafter we watched his second marriage and his descent into madness and paranoia, locked in his castle with two women practicing witchcraft, until we see him again on his deathbed.

Words cannot convey the marvellous stagework we saw, but the singing of the Gesualdo Six was well-nigh perfect, even in the less than perfect acoustic (for this sort of music) of the Queen’s Hall. As ever, the outer voices of Guy James (falsettist) and Owain Park (bass) form the core of the group’s sound, but Alasdair Austin’s high countertenor is now taking a greater proportion of the upper lines, to the great benefit of the group as a whole. The two tenors and baritone do much more than just fill in the harmonies, and I particularly enjoyed when the whole ensemble allowed themselves to sing in full Italian mode, fiery and in your face. This is real Italian music, far removed from the cool restraint of Oxbridge and English cathedrals!

Gesualdo’s motet, ‘Tristis est Anima mea’, was a recurring theme throughout, along with many of his famous madrigals, and the sheer outrageousness of his compositional style was brilliantly rendered by these sensational young men.

An outstanding event!