Before even a portion of its music had been heard in public, he wrote in a letter to a friend: "It is too theatrical for the concert-room and too much like an oratorio for the theatre.

It is, in fact, the perfect type of the sacred opera that I have dreamed of for years.

What will come of it I do not know; I do not think it can be performed entire.

As it contains eight distinct parts, one or two may from time to time be given either in a concert or on the stage." America was the first country to act on the suggestion of a fragmentary performance.

The first scene was brought forward in New York by Walter Damrosch at a public rehearsal and concert of the Symphony Society (the Oratorio Society assisting) on January 18 and 19, 1889.