Albertine desapareguda

"Mademoiselle Albertine has gone". This is how Françoise tells the narrator that his lover has departed

Following the departure of his mistress, the narrator is suddenly confronted with a situation he had not foreseen, because he had set out to establish a new way to live with Albertine and ultimately, to look for a way to deal a little better with his jealousy, which gnaws at his insides every time the girl sees someone else.

But this departure places the situation in another context. While the desire to have her back home and the spite of feeling abandoned fight each other within him, a shocking message arrives: Albertine has died. During his subsequent grief, the narrator decides to leave Paris for somewhere very different: Venice, a city he has dreamed of since he was a child but has not yet visited. There, he will find serenity and energy once again while strolling among the canals and the palaces, at the pace of his wanderings.

On his return journey, he learns of Saint-Loup's engagement to Gilberte Swann, and later decides to spend some time in Tansonville, on the outskirts of Combray, at Gilberte's home as a married woman. While he is there, secrets are inevitably revealed during moments of intimacy.


To mark the centenary of In Search of Lost Time, Marcel Proust’s most emblematic novel, we offer you seven recitals (one for each of the seven volumes that make up the work) based on Josep Maria Pinto’s translation and selection of texts. The sessions directed by Jordi Bosch will be accompanied by piano and violin.

Proust’s novel was written between 1908 and 1922, and with James Joyce’s Ulysses, was the cornerstone of the new narrative of the twentieth century, and irreversibly transformed the way time, space and own self are narrated from what himself named 'involuntary memory'.

You can also attend in person at the Espai Lliure the seven performances of this show on the first day of broadcast.