 The work was premiered at the Paris Opéra (Salle Le Peletier) on 9 March 1868.Among the noted singers in the original cast were Jean-Baptiste Faure as Hamlet and Christine Nilsson as Ophelia.The opera was staged, sung in Italian, at the Royal Italian Opera, Covent Garden (later the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden) in June 1869, with Nilsson as Ophelia and Charles Santley as Hamlet.