Le Songe d’une nuit d’été of Ambroise Thomas: L’éclat at the end of the tunnel

Abstract

This article argues that Ambroise Thomas’s opera Le Songe d’une nuit d’été functions as a Romantic allegory of the coarse artistic genius elevated and sanctified by royal and spiritual powers in an attempt to glorify and justify Shakespeare. Simultaneously, and more importantly, the opera is an appeal to French artists to move away from their adherence to neoclassical symmetry, restraint, and stasis, which persisted even in the work and opinions of the French Romantics.