About the work
'Der Stein der Weisen oder Die Zauberinsel' ('The Philosopher's Stone, or The Enchanted Isle') is a two-act singspiel to a text by Emanuel Schikaneder, based on a fairy tale from Christoph Martin Wieland's collection 'Dschinnistan'. It was written in 1790 as a joint effort by composers at Schikaneder's Theater auf der Wieden in Vienna: Johann Baptist Henneberg composed most of the score, while individual numbers came from Franz Xaver Gerl, Benedikt Schack, Schikaneder himself, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It premiered on 11 September 1790.
Plot
On an enchanted island, a pair of lovers must pass trials set by the demigod Astromonte, aided and hindered by comic servant characters and supernatural transformations — a fairy-tale opera typical of Vienna's suburban theatres of the time.
Cultural significance
The cast and structure closely anticipate Mozart's 'Die Zauberflöte', written a year later, which is why the work is now seen as a possible model for that opera. After steady success for about two decades it fell into obscurity and was rediscovered only in 1996 by musicologist David J. Buch from a complete score held at Hamburg's State and University Library. Mozart's contribution, the duet 'Nun liebes Weibchen', is known as the 'cat duet' because an enchanted character can only answer with 'meow'.