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.
A Midsummer Night's Dream (Mendelssohn) several roles from the play, performed live. The Overture is scored for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, ophicleide, timpani and strings. The ophicleide part was originally written for English bass horn ("corno inglese di basso"), which was also used at the first performance; the composer subsequently replaced this instrument with the ophicleide in the first published edition. The incidental music adds a third trumpet, three trombones, triangle and cymbals to this scoring. Parts of the score are used, re-orchestrated by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, in Max Reinhardt's 1935 movie "A Midsummer Night's Dream". Sections