Oratorio credited with writing the first English language oratorio, "Esther". Handel's imitators included the Italian Lidarti who was employed by the Amsterdam Jewish community to compose a Hebrew version of "Esther". Britain continued to look to Germany for its composers of oratorio. The Birmingham Festival commissioned various oratorios including Felix Mendelssohn's "Elijah" in 1846, later performed in German as "Elias". German composer Georg Vierling is noted for modernizing the secular oratorio form. John Stainer's "The Crucifixion" (1887) became the stereotypical battlehorse of massed amateur choral societies. Edward Elgar tried to revive the genre around the turn of century with the composition
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