About the work
Der alte Mann mit der jungen Frau (The Old Man and the Young Wife) is a four-act folk play with songs that Johann Nestroy wrote in 1849, right after the failed revolution, but never submitted for the required censorship approval, fearing rejection. The play stayed locked away until his death in 1862 and was only published, in a mutilated text, in 1890; it did not reach a stage until 14 July 1947, at the municipal theatre in Graz, with a Vienna premiere following in 1948 at the Theater in der Josefstadt.
Plot
Landowner Kern shelters the fugitive revolutionary Anton from the authorities until an amnesty lets the two emigrate together to Australia. In a parallel plot, Kern's much younger wife Regine nearly has an affair with Baron Rehfeld; Kern responds with public humiliation but, in the end, surprising generosity, leaving a separation on the table alongside the possibility of reconciliation.
Cultural significance
Because it openly deals with the disappointment of the failed 1848/49 revolution, the play is considered Nestroy's most politically pointed work and has since been read as a kind of political testament. Waiting almost a century for its stage premiere makes it an unusual case within his output.