The 91-year-old also attended the premiere of the documentary film about his life, Typisch Emil (Typical Emil), directed by Phil Meyer.
In the film, the Lucerne-born artist recounts his childhood, his great successes and the price of fame. Interview scenes alternate with his legendary sketches, never-before-seen footage and excerpts from the cult film Les faiseurs de Suisses (Swissmakers) (1978), in which he played the lead role.
Almost uninterrupted success
In 1968, the actor and former postal worker founded the Kleintheater cabaret in Lucerne with his first wife, Maja. A year later, Emil, then 36, broke through with his first major programme. Success followed in Germany, Austria and even French-speaking Switzerland, where he performed in French.
The Lucerne-born singer retired from the stage for the first time in 1987, at the age of 54. He did not return until the early 2000s, in his early seventies. He then toured for fifteen years with a new programme and public readings.
Role of his second wife Niccel
In the documentary, Emil also talks about his love affair with his second wife Niccel, a German woman 32 years younger, who he met in New York during a six-year stay there in the 1990s.
For the past twenty years, she has worked as her husband’s manager and co-produced the documentary Typisch Emil. The couple has been living in Basel for the past ten years, after spending fifteen years in Montreux, canton Vaud, on their return from New York.
Translated from German by DeepL/sb
This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.
If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, if you want to learn more about how we use technology, click here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.
Popular Stories
More
Culture
Documentary portrays Swiss teenagers forced to return to parents’ homeland
This content was published on
Swiss artist Daniel Spoerri, known for his artworks using leftover food with dirty cutlery and crockery, has passed away in Vienna at the age of 94.
Climate change tipped to alter Swiss avalanche behviour by 2100
This content was published on
Climate change is expected to result in fewer avalanches overall in Switzerland but to increase the danger of wet snow avalanches by 2100.
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.