Gesualdo Passione, Les Arts Florissants, Amala Dior Company, Barbican review - inspired collaboration excavates the music's humanity

This powerful, austere collaboration between Les Arts Florissants and the Amala Dianor Company – presented as part of Dance Umbrella – excavated all the violence, grief and transcendence of the events surrounding Christ’s betrayal and crucifixion.

Gesualdo published his tortured, piercingly beautiful Tenebrae Responsories in 1611, 21 years after he murdered his first wife and her lover, imbuing the music with the anguish and contradictory emotions of a man who many believe was seeking redemption through his art.

Perhaps it’s not surprising then that betrayal with a kiss dominated the first “nocturne” for Maundy Thursday. The production’s starkly elegant staging had Damiano Bigi’s Christ dressed in white and the six singers and three other dancers dressed in black, but there was no Manichean sense of good versus evil in what ensued.

Co-director of Les Arts Florissants, Paul Agnew, also sang tenor for Gesualdo’s a cappella liturgical music, which began with Christ’s plea to God to be released from his fate to be crucified. Though the music was filled with shadows, there was an eery serenity to the singing which was thrown into relief by former hip-hop dancer Dianor’s raw, angry choreography as it evoked his vehemently conflicted emotions. When Christ finally accepted that he had to obey the will of God and submit himself to betrayal and death, the music suddenly filled with light. But the dancers stamped and convulsed before huddling protectively around him.

The singers had memorised the Latin for the responsories so that they were free to interact with the dancers onstage. As a result what we saw was like an anarchic religious procession, in which all the suppressed drama implicit in the words was physically acted out in front of us. Agnew’s musical direction extracted all the spiky expressiveness from the Latin. While the second responsory translates as “My friend betrayed me with a kiss”, the original “Amicus meus osculi me tradidit signo” is full of hissing, cutting consonants, which were powerfully delivered by the singers.When Jesus and Clément Nikiema’s furious, wiry Judas met, they embraced as the bittersweet chromaticised harmonies unfurled around them. Again, it was difficult not to think of Gesualdo’s own life as he linked Judas’s act of betrayal directly to his death, “Infelix praetermisit, pretium sanguinis et in fine laqueo se suspendit”. The sense of the lost affection between them was tangible. Both it seemed were trapped in a series of events beyond their control, heightening the sense of grief and tragedy.

As we moved into Good Friday, Bigi’s Christ stripped down to prepare for crucifixion. In "Tamquam ad latronem" the singers at first infused the rich textures of Gesualdo’s music with an almost beatific serenity as he reflected on his life before this moment. Then suddenly the harmonies became violent and choppy, like a lake that had been agitated by a storm to evoke his resentment at being treated like a thief. The "Tenebrae factae sunt" began in tones as resonant as they were sombre, before the anguished dissonance as he cried out to his God for forsaking him, “Deus meus, ut quid me dereliquisti?”

It should be emphasised here that neither Bigi nor Nikiema were singing, but the interaction between dancers and singers took place so smoothly that at times it was like watching a slow-motion murmuration of birds. Though you had a sense of individuals embodying certain aspects of the story, the power of this production was very much in the swirling dynamic of the group.

Xavier Lazarini’s lighting design had some curious aspects to it. The lit neon rods on either side of the darkened stage sometimes brought an astringent minimalist vibe, but equally there were moments when – lit in white and orange – they looked like cigarettes. Overall though he created stage pictures of stunning bleakness, either heightening the choreography by emphasising the silhouettes of the dancers or adding to the sense of mystery by plunging them into shadow.

The sense of agitation did not let up in the Responsories for Holy Saturday. When the chief priests came to Pilate to petition him, the choir’s voices swarmed angrily like wasps. In the final "Miserere" – whose harmonies seemed at points to anticipate the Allegri "Miserere" that would be composed a quarter of a century later – the full richness and complexity of Gesualdo’s haunted vision came into full focus. This inspired collaboration, with its multinational cast, reminded us how this story extends well beyond religious belief, resonating for many not least because of its profound humanity.

• Gesualdo Passione touring till June 19
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