Holten: Gesualdo Shadows [Various] [Dacapo: 2.110428] [DVD]

The conductor and composer Bo Holten has long been fascinated by Carlo Gesualdo an Italian prince and one of the most extreme composers of the Late Renaissance, whose dramatic life and bitter fate make up the plot in Holten’s and librettist Eva Sommestad Holten’s ‘modern baroque opera’ Gesualdo Shadows. Reflecting our own time, this is a drama of a great artist lost between outward duties and inner fragility: from a passionate youth to an old age of mysticism, violence and melancholy. Gesualdo’s own madrigals, fused into the score, contribute to a thrilling universe of pain and beauty.