Ridono i prati, e'l ciel si rasserena; The meadows laugh, and the sky becomes
clear:
Jupiter is joyful, gazing upon his daughter:
l'aria e l'acqua e la terra è d'amor piena;
with love:
ogn’animal d'amar si racconsiglia. every animal is resolved again to love.
Ma per me, lasso, tornano i più gravi But to me, alas, there return the heaviest
sospiri, che dal cor profondo tragge sighs drawn from the deepest heart,
quella ch'al ciel se ne portò le chiavi. by her who took the keys away to heaven.
e'n belle donne honesti atti e soavi and the sweet, virtuous gestures of the
beautiful women
sono un deserto, e fere aspre e selvaggie. are a desert, and like cruel, savage
creatures.
– Carlo Gesualdo (1566-1613)
– a rich and powerful man. Gesualdo was born to a wealthy landowning family, and
grew up in a world where music was of fundamental importance: he was taught by
musicians such as Pomponio Nenna, Gian Leonardo Primavera and Jean de Macque.
By the time he was 26, he had inherited the principality of Venosa in Southern Italy.
Though his music was revolutionary in many respects, he is today best remembered
Though Gesualdo married again and went on to compose a well-respected body of
and his many eccentricities. Gesualdo’s madrigals are the most evocative of
his compositions, owing mostly to his striking use of dissonance and clashing
harmonies. The texts Gesualdo chose support this musical style because of their
often tortured syntax, confusing imagery and multiple meanings. Most of the poems
Gesualdo set deal with juxtapositions of love and hate, life and death, or pleasure
and pain, with these images interpreted both literally and within a sexual subtext.
Exemplary of a young Gesualdo, Bella Angioletta is the last madrigal in his Primo
libro di madrigali, published in 1594 (although the madrigal itself was probably
composed some years earlier). A text specially commissioned from Torquato Tasso
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