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
St Peter and St Paul, Bristol sailors arriving in the port. Services were held in Anglican churches, particularly the Temple of St Simon during the 1950s and 1960s. In 1963 it was renamed for the Apostles St Peter and Paul and in 1978 purchased by the Greek Orthodox church. The churchyard wall has coping blocks formed from copper-slag, the same material used to construct the Black Castle Public House. St Peter and St Paul, Bristol St Peter and St Paul, Bristol is the church of Bristol's principal Greek Orthodox congregation. It is situated in the Lower Ashley Road. The building was constructed in the 1840s as