Page:The history of Mendelssohn's oratorio 'Elijah'.djvu/56

 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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