DAS ZWEITE GESICHT

Das Zweite Gesicht: translation

(Two-Faced) byOskar Blumenthal.

Premiered 1890. The two faces of the title belong at first to Count Mengers, who appears to be a kindly gentleman but in reality is a gambler and ladies' man. He is involved in a bitter lawsuit with his young sister-in-law Charlotte, who married the Count's late elder brother and stands to inherit the entire family fortune. Count Mengers has hired an intelligent and aggressive lawyer to contest the will, but while advocating the Count's case, the lawyer falls in love with Charlotte. He, too, it turns out, has two faces. Charlotte also wears two faces; she claims to love the lawyer but is actually an unscrupulous bounder who married an old man for his money. She claims that her shabby life as a young woman made her marriage to the elderly Mengers attractive — and anyway, the old man wanted her to marry him in order to ease his advancing years. She did so at the sacrifice of her own honor. Enter a fourth party with two faces: her friend Kitty, who is actually Count Mengers's daughter just graduated from boarding school. Kitty convinces her father to settle with Charlotte because she is not really so ambitious as she seems. Furthermore, she really loves the lawyer and did indeed make her elderly husband happy in his last years. Count Mengers, satisfied with the settlement, now looks forward to his next trip to the casinos in Monte Carlo. Blu-menthal's skill with dialogue turned the play into a satisfying satire on the aristocracy; it was among the most frequently performed of all comedies during the early 1890s.