THE REVISED ORATORIO.
��"You have no idea how they are inundated with enquiries at Newgate Street [Ewer & Co.'s] as to
when 'Elijah' will be published
God bless you, dear Sir!
- ' W. Bartholomew."
Whatever influence this letter from Bartholomew may have had upon its recipient, and doubtless others wrote in the same strain, Mendelssohn duly came to London — alas ! for the last time — at the beginning of April, 1847, the year in which he died.
The first performance of the revised version of
- Elijah " — the form in which we now know the
oratorio — took place, under the auspices of the Sacred Harmonic Society, at Exeter Hall, London, on Friday, April 16, 1847, conducted by the composer. Miss Birch, Miss Dolby (afterwards Madame Sainton-Dolby), and Mr. Henry Phillips replaced Madame Caradori-Allan, Miss Hawes, and Herr Staudigl, who had " created " their respective parts at Birmingham. " Lockey would be quite sufficient for all the tenor solos," wrote Mendelssohn, and so he proved to be.
Madame Sainton-Dolby records : " After I had sung ' rest in the Lord,' Mendelssohn turned to me with tears in his eyes and said, with his bright frankness of manner, ' Thank you from my heart, Miss Dolby.' I shall never forget that look of bright- ness." Mr. W. H. Cummings, then a chorister of the Temple Church, sang alto in the chorus at the first London performance. He and some other boys were asked to help, as the alto part lay rather high ( 123 )
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