Intermission

About this scene

Five minutes before Elijah begins again. The house is in the drought, a dust ochre, and the rain fills it from both wings toward the middle of the porch, so the street can see how long is left; motes of dust drift over the dry part still waiting, and drops glint in the rain that has come. Each minute a wave runs over the rain and a harp marks it; when the rain meets in the middle the whole house swells and gives the drought back for the Introduction, where Elijah calls it down.

The music is Mendelssohn's own, as at a concert hall: the waiting music is the quiet numbers of the oratorio, played softly from the set's own transcriptions (WAITING), each scene's notes as its excerpt has them. Each minute a harp spreads the chord sounding under it. Then the call back, as Bayreuth calls its audience with a motif from the coming act: the four chords of Elijah's curse, the first thing the oratorio plays, on trombones and tuba, twice, from far then near, the last landing as the rain meets in the middle.