 This was Sullivan's first major composition, and its success quickly brought him to the attention of the musical establishment in England.Sullivan wrote his incidental music to Shakespeare's play as his graduation piece while a conservatory student at Leipzig.Felix Mendelssohn was much admired by the tutors at the Leipzig Conservatory, and Sullivan's music, following the pattern of Mendelssohn's famous score for "A Midsummer Night's Dream", was chosen for inclusion in the Conservatory’s end-of-year concert at the Leipzig Gewandhaus on 6 April 1861, while Sullivan was still eighteen years old.