A Midsummer Night's Dream (Mendelssohn) Midsummer Night's Dream" in 1842, 16 years after he wrote the Overture. It was written to a commission from King Frederick William IV of Prussia. Mendelssohn was by then the music director of the King's Academy of the Arts and of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. A successful presentation of Sophocles' "Antigone" on 28 October 1841 at the New Palace in Potsdam, with music by Mendelssohn (Op. 55) led to the King asking him for more such music, to plays he especially enjoyed. "A Midsummer Night's Dream" was produced on 14 October 1843, also at Potsdam. The producer was Ludwig Tieck.
Lysander (A Midsummer Night's Dream) Lysander (A Midsummer Night's Dream) Lysander is a fictional character in William Shakespeare's play "A Midsummer Night's Dream". A handsome young man of Athens, Lysander is in love with Egeus's daughter Hermia. However, Egeus does not approve of Lysander and prefers his daughter to marry a man called Demetrius. Meanwhile, Hermia's friend Helena has fallen in love with Demetrius. When Hermia is forced to choose between dying, never seeing a man again or marrying Demetrius, she and Lysander run away into the forest. After Lysander is put under Puck's spell, being mistaken for Demetrius he falls in love with Helena.