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It seemed an odd programming choice to begin the concert with selections by the greatest madrigalist of all, Monteverdi, and then follow it with music of lesser lights.

It can be hard to separate the art from the life of Carlo Gesualdo, music's most notorious madrigalist and double murderer.

But recourse to the madrigalists — and therefore to Gesualdo’s music — diminishes as the evening progresses, and I came to regret the infrequency of their appearances.

They may appear in full concentration and lustre, as in Hamlet or The Faërie Queene; or in fitful and intermittent flashes, as in scores and hundreds of sonneteers, pamphleteers, playwrights, madrigalists, preachers.

The music of this intermezzo was by Malvezzi, who was a distinguished madrigalist.