If it’s a chronicle of troubled egomaniacal genius you want, then Werner Herzog would appear to be the man for the job. Without the budget or ambition of Nosferatu or Fitzcarraldo, Gesualdo was made for German TV in 1995. Heaven only knows what Herzog actually wanted to do with the life and work of the Prince of Venosa; what we get is an hour-long film that would pass muster as a “making of” extra to a DVD of the real thing.

Scholars, cooks and handymen all pass in front of Herzog’s wobbly documentary camera with their own take on the composer’s lurid life and music, as we move between wrecked and well appointed palazzi on his manor. I like the man playing the Italian bagpipes: “I come here to play music into the cracks of the walls, to stop the evil spirit escaping. Whose spirit is it? Gesualdo’s.” He doesn’t actually ask himself the rhetorical question, the unseen interviewer does that, and Herzog, spurning subtitles, intones the whole exchange over the top in accented English. Bonkers. So is the juxtaposition of the two musical ensembles, both fine, but coming from completely different performing traditions which are reflected in the narrative personas of their directors, Gerald Place (English, controlled and a touch nervous) and Alan Curtis (the American director of Il Complesso Barocco, confident, conversational and relaxed). Completing this motley crew is a cameo from Berio’s favoured chanteuse, Milva, as “the reincarnation of Maria d’Avalos”, Gesualdo’s first wife, with a generous embonpoint and a tape recorder. Go in with low expectations and you won’t be disappointed.