HISTORY OF MENDELSSOHN'S "ELIJAH."
negotiator between the Committee and Jenny Lind, judging from the following letter : —
[To Joseph Moore, Esq.]
[Written in Ettglish.]
" Leipzig, January 15, 1846.
" My dear Sir, — Yesterday I received your letter
of the 7th, and answer it as early as I can. My
oratorio is in progress, and becomes every day more
developed ; but whether I shall be able to finish it
in time for your preparations is another question,
which I sh.all not be able to answer positively before
two months are elapsed. It will then be the middle
of March, more than five months before the period of
your Festival, and if I should fail in my efforts of
ending my work in time (which I fully hope and
trust to do), there will be ample time for you to
make it up by something else. Your question about
Jenny Lind is very important to the success of the
Festival, as I consider her, without hesitation, as
the first singer of the day, and perhaps of many days
to come. But I am not able to undertake the
negotiation which your chairman would entrust me
with, as I know how much she is surrounded with
engagements of all sorts, and how little likely it is
that I could get anything like a positive answer from
her, unless a formal application from the Committee
had previously been made to her. It is by no means
certain that such an application would be successful,
but at any rate I think it the only way, if there is
one. When you formally wrote to me about the
same subject, I was at Berlin, and spoke to her about
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