Music from the opera

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reconciliation

Opera in 4 acts

Music and libretto: Urs Brodmann

 

 

 

 

 

‘Reconciliation’ is an opera that seeks to show us human weaknesses and their somewhat controversial excesses in an unconventional way.

The smoker, the main character of the story, a cigarette manufacturer, a passionate cigar smoker and pleasure-seeker, lives and works in a country where a new law has almost totally banned smoking since January 1st, which means anyone who still wants to smoke can only do so in a private jet at a height of more than 13,472 metres or in a leap year between November 17th and February 29th, while swimming or diving, but at a distance of at least 34 metres from the shore. If this law were to be violated, all people who would carry on smoking would be jailed but once released, if they happen to be caught in the act of smoking again, they will be definitively exiled to the Smokers’ Island.

The Smoker, for whom the smoking ban is a complete nonsense carries on smoking in his privacy, at his home as well as at his office in his company. Yet, his wife, the priest, his employees and his tenants, who are all delighted in a fanatic way of this new law will watch him, scold him threaten him and ultimately denounce him to the State Police and he will then be arrested . As a consequence of the measures taken by this dictatorship against smoking, in that country, smokers and non-smokers no longer understand each other.

The smoker, in his search for the last refuge for smokers, goes to the brothel, a place where he can still smoke secretly and where he meets Anne. After a raid at the brothel, he is exiled along with Anne to the Smokers’ Island where, during their wedding party, the story takes an unexpected turn.

So, one can easily imagine that this unusual love story is full of humour, eroticism but also very dramatic.

 

 

In connection with opera, I would also like to point out how important cigar smoking was in earlier times, when there was still much to discover and invent. The emotional way of thinking and acting that was quite normal for our ancestors, when famous politicians, artists, inventors, philosophers and connoisseurs enriched, embellished and advanced our world creatively while smoking cigars, and no one took offence at smoking, is now a thing of the past. As we know, Sigmund Freud conducted his dream research with his patients lying on the couch, smoking cigars as a matter of course. Many researchers would not have had the patience for their deadly tedious research work without the calming effect of cigar smoking. I am also convinced that Thomas Mann needed the pleasurable calming effect of his cigars in order to write his great novels.

I would like to quote Thomas Mann once again ” But a day without tobacco would be the worst boredom for me, a whole gloomy day without charm and if I would have to think to myself: there is nothing to smoke today – I think I would not have the courage at all to wake up, really, I would stay lying in my bed.”

And according to Franz Liszt: “A good cigar dispels the meannesses of the life.”

A multitude of other examples can be quoted where the cigar is a source of inspiration for great ideas, quality of life and a never-ending joie de vivre.

Thanks to this modern incidental music, with weeping as well as laughing eyes, I would like to remember the good old days when great discoveries and artworks drew their origin from a lot of cigar smoke, this past of which I would like to make the nostalgic funeral oration and I hope I succeeded in doing so with the Raucher-Tango .

Urs Brodmann