Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, became famous for two reasons: The bloody double murder of his first wife and her lover, and his passionate and erotic view of profane love. The Books of Madrigals chart the strong changes in his style, and contain some of the most inspired and anguished vocal works in the entire madrigal repertoire, on the themes of love, rejection, death, suffering, joy and sorrow. Brimming with often astonishing and sometimes unpredictable melodic and tonal contrasts to express the agonies and ecstasies of love, Gesualdo's Madrigals show him to have been one of the most inventive and eccentric musical minds of his age.