Elijah (oratorio) thorough and speedy recognition of a great work of art'. Notwithstanding the work's triumph, Mendelssohn revised his oratorio wholesale before another group of performances in London in April 1847 - one (23 April) in the presence of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. The German version was first performed on the composer's birthday, 3 February 1848, in Leipzig, a few months after Mendelssohn's death, under the baton of the composer Niels Wilhelm Gade. Mendelssohn uses biblical episodes relating to Elijah, which in the original, :19 and , are narrated in rather laconic form, to produce intensely dramatic scenes, by adding several
Elijah analogy for Perun, the supreme Slavic god of storms, thunder and lightning bolts. In many Slavic countries Elijah is known as Elijah the Thunderer ("Ilija Gromovnik"), who drives the heavens in a chariot and administers rain and snow, thus actually taking the place of Perun in popular beliefs. Perun is also sometimes conflated with the legendary hero Elijah of Murom. The feast of St. Elias is known as "Ilinden" in South Slavic, and was chosen as the day of the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising in 1903; it is now the holiday of Republic Day in the Republic of Macedonia. In Estonian folklore