MEDIATHEK

Le Maletendu (The Misunderstanding, sometimes published as Cross Purpose), a play by Albert Camus, has been set to music by the Argentinian composer Fabián Panisello. This work centers on personal motivations that lead to blind, uninformed action.

A man returns to his home village after having been absent for 20 years. While he does rent a room at the guesthouse run by his mother and his sister, he refrains from revealing himself to be their long-lost son and brother. He prefers to discreetly observe the life of his family members, getting to know them from a distance and seeing whether they might recognize him. But even as he keeps his own identity concealed, he cannot know that both women likewise have a secret: for years, they have been murdering and robbing their guests in order to eventually have sufficient means to flee the confining isolation of their village. With all three thus trapped in their roles, the disaster proceeds to run its course. Only when the two women examine the papers of the murdered man do they learn just who their victim was.

On his opera, Fabián Panisello writes:
“Through the addition of electronic sounds and speech recordings (some of which come from behind the audience) as well as by including instrumental interludes that are always linked to one of the relevant figures, different levels of the characters—their fears, dreams, wishes, and the discrepancies between these things and reality—are revealed.”