«Beltà, poi che t’assenti»: Milva, from Madrigals to Ghosts, in Gesualdo – Death for Five Voices by Werner Herzog

Abstract

This article explores the interrelation between music, image, and narrative in Werner Herzog’s cinema through the conceptual metaphor of spectrality. Herzog’s films construct an “acoustic vision,” where music does not merely accompany images but unlocks their latent meanings, creating a tension between the visible and the audible. From his early linguistic experiments in Last Words (1967) and Precautions Against Fanatics (1968) to later works such as Signs of Life (1968), Fitzcarraldo (1982), La Soufrière (1977), and Lessons of Darkness (1992), Herzog’s cinema reveals a complex interplay between sound, image, and narrative structure. The study examines how music transforms language into sonic substance and how it shapes visionary, dreamlike, and ecstatic film forms. Special focus is given to Gesualdo – Death for Five Voices (1995), where Herzog’s investigation of Carlo Gesualdo’s avant-garde music and tormented biography exemplifies his ecstatic method. In this experimental documentary, spectrality emerges both through the depiction of Gesualdo’s haunted existence and the transmedial performance of Maria D’Avalos’ ghost. This spectral figure is embodied by the Italian artist Milva, whose performance transcends simple dramatization: Milva becomes a liminal presence, weaving together historical memory, mythic resonance, and musical interpretation. Through her voice and body, the lost figure of Maria D’Avalos is not only evoked but reanimated within the film’s hybrid space between documentary and fiction, thus highlighting the intermedial nature of Herzog’s project. The analysis shows how Herzog’s use of musical and visual counterpoints generates a dense intermedial texture, blending history, myth, and performance. Ultimately, Herzog’s cinema reveals a haunted, visionary poetics rooted in the dynamic synergy of sound and image, where the auditory and the visual are entwined along the same sensory continuum.