The Sorcerer is Gilbert and Sullivan's first surviving full-length opera. The previous work, Trial by Jury was a half-hour curtain raiser, satirizing the courtroom and Victorian mores. (Prior to that, they cooperated on a Christmas Pantomime called Thespis, but the music for it has been lost.)
While this was an early work, the pair were far from inexperienced. Gilbert was a well-known playwright and Sullivan was regarded as one of England's leading composers. See also "The music of The Sorcerer."
While Trial By Jury was an obvious satire of the courtroom, The Sorcerer's satire is a bit more subtle. Gilbert used the love-potion plot (which was already a well-known opera device) to turn a village on its head, having everyone fall in love with the "wrong" person. Sullivan, meanwhile had a grand time satirizing opera conventions.
The Sorcerer opened in November, 1877, and had an initial run of 178 performances. It was revived several times after that until 1939, but when the sets and costumes were destroyed in an air raid, it left the D'Oyly-Carte repertory until the 1970s, when it was again performed more often.
Unlike later operas, where Gilbert introduces the men's or women's chorus at once and the other later, this show opens with a mixed chorus and the chorus, representing the village of Ploverleigh, performs together throughout the opera.
The story opens with the announcement that Alexis the brave, and son of Sir Marmaduke, is to wed the lovely Aline, daughter of Lady Sangazure. Alexis is so in love with Aline and with the idea of love that he hires the Sorcerer, John Wellington Wells to put a love potion in the celebratory tea. All unmarried people who drink it will fall asleep and awake and fall in love with the first unmarried person they meet, no matter how "unsuitable."
In a subplot, Constance, daughter of Mrs Partlet, is secretly in love, with Dr Daley, the vicar, who is rather older than Constance, and feels he is too old ever to marry. We also learn the Sir Marmaduke fancies Lady Sangazure.
Wells enters and sings the most difficult patter song in all G&S,("My name is John Wellington Wells"). Alexis persuades him to spike the tea. The villagers and Sir Marmaduke sing a rousing drinking song, while drinking the tea, and then at the end, fall asleep all over the stage as Act I ends.
In Act II, the villagers awake, fall for each other and dance off after a country dance. Constance enters with the very elderly, slightly deaf, Notary, whom she has fallen in love with. Mrs. Partlet, the lowly pew opener, enters having fallen in love with the regal Sir Marmaduke. Wells realizes all has gone awry, but Lady Sangazure enters, determined to fall in love with him. Wells pretends he is engaged and she leaves. Alexis persuades Aline she must show her love to him by taking the potion as well. She does, and immediately meets and falls in love with Dr. Daley. Alexis is horrified, and Wells explains that the spell can only be broken if one of them "yields his life to Ahrimanes." Alexis agrees, but Aline persuades him that she would then have no one to love, and Wells agrees, sinking into a trap with red smoke as the villagers rejoice.
One immediately thinks of Donizetti's L'Elisir d'Amore (1832), but in that opera, the love potion is fictional and never used. In fact Gilbert's early play Dulcimara was a burlesque of this opera. Lesser know today, is the opera Le Philtre, by The Frenchman, Daniel Auber (1831), which was based on the same story.
In Wagner's Gotterdammerung (1876) a love potion is used to bewitch Siegfried into loving Gutrune instead of Brunnhilde, and while this opera appears to be contemporary with The Sorcerer, the opera's long gestation period (nearly 25 years) guarantees that Sullivan was aware of it. Of course, a love potion figures in Tristan und Isolde (1857) as well. Isolde, while on a voyage to marry King Mark, instructs her maid to prepare a poison so she will not have to marry him. Instead Brangane prepares a love potion, and Isolde falls for the handsome Tristan, her guard.