Â鶹Éç

Soprano Hye Jung Lee from South Korea sings A vos jeux, mes amis … Partagez-vous mes fleurs! from Ambroise Thomas’s Hamlet in the 2011 Â鶹Éç Cardiff Singer of the World final.

Ophelia has gone mad and imagines herself married to Hamlet. She left the palace at dawn, when the lark was in the sky. She and Hamlet are bound by an oath of love, and if he has left her, she says, she will lose her mind. Share my flowers, she says, the rosemary and periwinkle. Then she recalls the tale of the Wilis, pale and fair, sleeping beneath the water. The Wilis are vengeful creatures of legend, ghosts of young women who died before their wedding day. She drowns herself in the lake.