Say 'Carlo Gesualdo' and you say 'heavenly music', and 'cruel disposition'. This Renaissance composer's name is inextricably linked to the gruesome double murder he committed on his wife and lover when he found them in flagrante delicto.
Who else but De Warme Winkel could make an appealing performance of this thought Tido Visser, artistic director of the Nederlands Kamerkoor. So the renowned choir joined forces with the anarchic theatre collective for Gesualdo. The performance goes 21 June in premiere during the Holland Festival. I asked actors Ward Weemhoff and Mara van Vlijmen about the how and what.
Years ago, Tido Visser raised a ball: 'After the end of Total Thomas he was on our doorstep, proposing to create a performance around Gesualdo,' recalls Ward Weemhoff. 'It is unusual for others to pitch an idea to us, but he lit us up with his enthusiasm.' That it did not immediately lead to a collaboration was because they still had about six years' worth of plans of their own. But the seed had been planted.
Not polished
'Tido even did a speaking engagement for us,' says Mara van Vlijmen. 'He told Gesualdo's life story and played some pieces. That was the moment when I thought: yes, we can do something with that. The contrast between his music, which exudes real beauty, and his lurid history is attractive to theatre-makers.'
Still, there was a slight trepidation about engaging with the Nederlands Kamerkoor. Weemhoff: 'I didn't know the choir very well. And anything that has Royal or Dutch in front of it evokes a certain distrust in me. We were a bit worried that it would be very neat and polished. But when we attended a few concerts, we became impressed by their vulnerability within the formal, establishment-like context. From there, we started delving into Gesualdo's life and listening to his music to explore what repertoire might be interesting.'
Gesualdo's Mona Lisa
'Independently, we all came up with roughly the same top list of madrigals,' Weemhoff continues. 'Moro, lasso was at the top of everyone's list, which is Gesualdo's Mona Lisa. There was some discussion about this: shouldn't we leave it out because it is almost too popular? But that would be a geeky argument, because it is precisely a challenge to relate to it. As for religious pieces, it stands O vos omnes high on the list.'
The Warm Shop is famous for its so-called oeuvre performances. Close Gesualdo to this? Van Vlijmen: 'It is a broad concept. We certainly include his life and the era in our search, but that does not necessarily mean that we present his entire life course on stage. The themes that bubble up from our research have everything to do with the here and now and with ourselves.'
Repulsive and attractive
In this, the collective is still searching. Van Vlijmen: 'In any case, what keeps recurring is how the abject in Gesualdo's life story is simultaneously repulsive and attractive. Where does this attraction come from? Are we perhaps hugely sensationalist?'
Weemhoff: 'Then you soon arrive at the sublime. He drank menstrual blood, kept witches in the cellar, killed his wife and her lover with a knife. And in gruesome fashion too: he stabbed her 20 times in her groin. At the same time, he composed heavenly music - about eternal love, about impossible love and about the (im)possibility of dying. This is fascinating.'
Sublime
Weemhoff draws a comparison with the attack on the Twin Towers. 'Seeing those mighty towers suddenly sink to the ground is simultaneously terrifying and appealing, purely for its physicality.' Van Vlijmen: 'Or take the election of Trump as president. That is also a kind of sublime experience. It's repulsive on the one hand, but on the other, you know: something special is going to happen here!'
Such interfaces with modernity are unlikely to be made explicit. 'That political-actual side is more in the background,' says Van Vlijmen. Weemhoff adds: 'We are more likely to zoom in on universal experiences of violence and sex and their links to art. These are themes that have occupied us for more than two thousand years. Gesualdo became famous for being the first to work with dissonance, which was only picked up centuries later. He was a pioneer.'
Louis CK
Although both are averse to psychologising, they see a connection to his lurid deeds in this. 'When you want to push boundaries as an artist, you have to be strong as a personality,' Weemhoff believes. 'I'm not commenting on the morality of it, but I'm not surprised that someone like Louis CK drops his trousers to show his stiff cock. That too is transgressive.' Van Vlijmen also recognises a certain vulnerability in the person of Gesualdo: 'He was obviously unhappy. We want to make that vulnerability insightful.'
To this end, the actors also made themselves vulnerable. During a sneak-preview, they detached themselves from the Chamber Choir, undressed and draped themselves naked over each other, after which Weemhoff proceeded to kick and punch them.
He says: 'That creates discomfort, both with us and the audience, but the best art always has a certain vulnerability. That you don't mask things, just show skill and craftsmanship, but also dare to break through that.' Van Vlijmen: 'For example, by really taking the time to seek that pleasure on stage.' Weemhoff: 'By the way, you don't generate that lust as a person but as a stage actor.'
Obsessed with music
Did they develop sympathy or dislike for Gesualdo during their research? Van Vlijmen: 'At first I felt an incredible distaste, but I still found things I can identify with. I find it attractive that he was so autistic about music. That he went to visit some principality twice a year, where they looked up to it for months because he could only talk about his music for hours. It moves me that maybe he could only express his love in his art.'
Weemhoff: 'I have no such opinion about him as a person, I am a fan of his music! I'm never going to weigh anyone morally, that applies to all the performances we've made so far. You look at it as an artist, the question of whether you feel sympathy or distaste is actually irrelevant. You make a role of that historical figure. To that end, you use the ingredients from his life, in this case perversion.'
Conscious listening
In an announcement, I read something about an 'auditory-therapeutic' session. What should we imagine with that? Weemhoff: 'Silence is still an underestimated phenomenon in theatre. It is one of the pillars of your profession, but it is invariably filled with noise: there are always LED lights, fans, stage spots and so on buzzing around. Gesualdo will be a performance where you become very conscious of listening. We want to anoint and flog the audience's ears.'
Het Nederlands Kamerkoor & De Warme Winkel: Gesualdo, Holland Festival 21-25 June. More info and tickets here.
This article previously appeared in the Nederlands Kamerkoor magazine.
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