Breaking the Rules

Following their popular What the Dickens? (November 2024) and Creating Carmen (March 2025) shows, The Telling return to Arena Theatre, in collaboration with The Mancunium Consort with Breaking the Rules.

​Clare Norburn’s acclaimed play with visceral music explores the extraordinary life of 16th/17th-century composer-prince Carlo Gesualdo.

After a childhood of privation with The Jesuits in preparation for a life in the priesthood, the unexpected death of Gesualdo’s brother leads to a sudden change of fate. Overnight, Gesualdo is now expected to produce an heir and is quickly married off to the world-wise Maria d’Avalos. Her cruel treatment of him leads inexorably to Gesualdo committing his infamous murder of Maria and her lover.

Rising star vocal group,  The Mancunium Consort  play Gesualdo’s consort of singers: they control the “playlist”, providing a soundtrack of Gesualdo’s deeply personal and unconventionally expressive music, including his madrigals and monumental Tenebrae Responsories. Their singing triggers memories of his past, as Gesualdo contemplates the tumultuous events that led to the murder. Now facing death and eternal damnation, the only thing that can save him is to face up to what happened that night 23 years before.

The drama is directed by BAFTA-nominated director, Nicholas Renton.