It was adapted for the West End and Broadway stages as The Pink Dominos, and later became the basis of a Viennese operetta (Der Opernball, 1898) and a musical comedy (To-Night's the Night, 1914).
With the aid of Hortense, Marguerite's maid, they concoct notes from supposed anonymous admirers to Georges and Paul, their spouses, inviting them to a rendezvous that evening.
(The Oxford English Dictionary defines a domino as "A kind of loose cloak, apparently of Venetian origin, chiefly worn at masquerades, with a small mask covering the upper part of the face").
A bracelet has been found in the restaurant, which fell from the arm of the mysterious "pink domino", and, in the midst of noisy and fruitless explanations between the whole party, it is brought in.
This relieves Paul and Georges from their self recriminations, but it leads to a discovery that almost equally confounds them, for it turns out to belong to Madame Beaubuisson, a grande dame who for thirty years has been seen as a model of rectitude.
There are only conjugal misfortunes, marriage contracts hacked about, perpetual distrust, shady permutations of husbands and wives, an entire structure of betrayal and lies only just propped up, and collapsing in the last act amid the bursts of laughter from the audience.
"[11] The Paris correspondent of the London paper The Era found the play "very laughable … highly amusing" and the third act in particular "a marvel of merriment".
The critic wondered whether the piece could be staged in any other city than Paris "so thinly-veiled is the impropriety that renders its incidents amusing",[9] but by October the play was running successfully in Brussels.
[16] An Italian adaptation of the original, Un domino color di rosa, was presented at the Teatro San Genesio in Rome in 2019 by the Compagnia Isigold.
The libretto was adapted from Delacour and Hennequin's original by Viktor Léon and Heinrich von Waldberg, and the music was by Richard Heuberger.