"[3] The twenty-five-year-old Alexandre Dumas, père, who was about to embark on a major career as a novelist and dramatist, was in the audience and found the performance revelatory, "far surpassing all my expectations".

"[2] Even the wife of the English ambassador, Lady Granville, felt compelled to report that the Parisians "roar over Miss Smithson's Ophelia, and strange to say so did I".

18, written in the 1830s although not published until 1852, included "La mort d'Ophélie" ("The death of Ophelia"), a setting of a ballade by Ernest Legouvé, the text of which is a free adaptation of Gertrude's monologue in act 4, scene 7.

With the heightened interest in Shakespeare, and in particular Hamlet, that had been aroused by Smithson's performances at the Odéon, he decided to prepare a new French translation of the play to be presented at his Théâtre Historique.

Ducis had told the English actor-impresario David Garrick that a ghost which speaks, itinerant players, and a fencing duel were "absolutely inadmissible" on the French stage.

This constellation of roles preserved the tetradic model and the balance of male and female parts which had become established in French grand opera at the time of Meyerbeer's Robert le diable in 1831.

[1] Other plot changes, such as making Läerte less cynical and more positive towards Hamlet early on,[19] not only simplified the story but heightened the tragedy of their duel in the Gravediggers Scene.

[24] According to accounts in the press, it was that same year, at his publisher Heugel's office in Paris, that Thomas met the Swedish soprano Christina Nilsson, who had just been engaged at the Opéra.

[29] Hamlet was Thomas's greatest success, along with Mignon, and was further staged in Leipzig, Budapest, Brussels, Prague, New York City, Saint Petersburg, Berlin, and Vienna within five years of the Paris premiere.

For instance, in 1890 a critic with The Pall Mall Gazette wrote: No one but a barbarian or a Frenchman would have dared to make such a lamentable burlesque of so tragic a theme as Hamlet.

[30]Hamlet (Vienna, 1874), an operetta by Julius Hopp, who adapted many of Offenbach's works for the Austrian capital, is a comic parody of Thomas's artistic methods in the opera.

The court celebrates the Coronation of Gertrude, widow of King Hamlet; and her marriage to his brother, Claudius (Courtiers: Que nos chants montent jusqu'aux cieux – "Let our songs rise to the skies").

According to the German musicologist Annegret Fauser, Ophélie's music contrasts with Hamlet's very regular 8-bar phrase: the 4-bar theme accentuates her nervous character by the use of dotted-note rhythms, a chromatic melody line, and high-range woodwind instruments.

The text of the duet is based on Shakespeare's "Doubt thou the stars are fire", which is part of a letter from Hamlet to Ophelia which Polonius reads to Gertrude and Claudius.

He tells Hamlet and Ophélie that the King is sending him to the court of Norway, and he must leave that very night (unlike in the play where, as Matthew Gurewitsch of Opera News has said, he embarks for "the fleshpots of Paris").

For some reason Matthew Gurewitsch finds this change somewhat odd: "Horatio and a sidekick blab the dread news of the Ghost's appearance to a squadron of frolicking young officers, who are totally unimpressed.

She sees Ophélie's distress and presses her for information as to its cause (The Queen: Je croyais près de vous trouver mon fils – "I thought to find my son with you").

Edward Greenfield, on the other hand, has written that "Thomas brings off a superb dramatic coup with the most memorable of the hero's solos, his drinking song for the players...."[51] Scene 2 The Great Hall of the castle, festively lit.

The royal throne is on the right, a platform for the courtiers on the left; at the back, a small theatre, curtains closed (set for the premiere designed by Charles-Antoine Cambon).

These utterances of the King and the Queen begin a grand ensemble passage, "a magnificent septet",[22] which builds to a climax in which Hamlet bursts out in "mad Berlioz-like excitement"[51] with snatches of the Chanson Bacchique.

The recording conducted by Richard Bonynge (with Sherrill Milnes as Hamlet and Joan Sutherland as Ophelia) includes the ballet music in its proper place at the beginning of act 4, but omits significant portions of it.

[54] Edward Greenfield, in his review of the recording in the Gramophone magazine says the ballet music "may in principle seem an absurd intrusion in this of all operas, but … in effect provides a delightful preparation for Ophelia's mad scene".

Elizabeth Forbes, in her essay which accompanies that recording, says: "the ballet-divertissement of La Fête du printemps (a ballet was obligatory at the Opéra in the 19th century) which opens act 4 is frankly an anti climax.

It concludes with an even more elaborate cadenza ending with an extended trill on F (F5), which finishes with a downward octave leap, and a quick passage ascending to the final staccato high B-flat (B♭5).

)[20] It includes a quantity of coloratura singing, and, in the words of Matthew Gurewitsch, is "interwoven with a wordless wisp of a refrain, spun out over the nervous pulse of a drum, like birdsong from some undiscovered country.

A short choral passage (Peasants: Sa raison a fui sans retour – "Her reason has fled, never to return") introduces an orchestral reprise of the waltz music first heard before the Ballade.

The final section begins with a soft woodwind chord followed by harp arpeggios with a wordless choral accompaniment à bouches fermées (similar to the "Humming Chorus" from Puccini's later opera, Madama Butterfly) which repeats the theme from Pâle et blonde.

)[9] According to Elizabeth Forbes, the opera's initial success at the Opéra was undoubtedly mostly due to the spectacular vocal effects of the "Mad Scene" as executed by the original Ophélie, Christine Nilsson.

The English music critic John Steane, reviewing Simon Keenlyside's performance of this aria, wrote:Coming after the grave-diggers' scene, it is a tender yet bitterly repentant elegy on Ophelia's death.

From the composer it draws on the graceful French lyricism we know from the tenor solos in Mignon, adding a more complex responsiveness to the opera-Hamlet's simpler nature.