It Is Enough

About this scene

Obadiah warns Elijah that Jezebel will have his life, and he flees alone into the wilderness.

The scene opens where the last one ended: the people stained with Jezebel's wine, the wine closing on Elijah's small amber on Right. It ebbs away as Obadiah comes: a teal light from the back of Porch Right that walks down the run and out along Right to Elijah, flaring with every word of "Man of God, now let my words be precious in thy sight". At "Elijah is worthy to die" a stab of wine crosses the house; at "that they may slay thee" the teal flashes beside him.

"Arise, then, and hasten for thy life; to the wilderness journey": Elijah goes. His amber leaves its place and walks the long way round the house, a step with every throb of the aria's quavers, up Porch Right, across Porch Front, down Porch Left and along Left, leaving a fading glow behind, and on to Side, the wilderness, where he stops at its far end, the farthest point of the house from the street. Obadiah's teal stays behind on Right and fades.

"It is enough, O Lord; now take away my life, for I am not better than my fathers!": alone at the free end of Side, his amber flares a little on each word and sinks lower after each phrase, smaller and dimmer, while the line Mendelssohn gives the cellos under him moves as a slow ember along Side toward him and back. On the last "it is enough" it settles beside him and goes out, and he is left a small low glow in the dust of the wilderness.

The music is Mendelssohn's own: No. 25, Obadiah's recitative, and the first seventeen bars of No. 26, transcribed from the Novello octavo vocal score into it_is_enough.musicxml and timed by scripts/score_excerpt.py at the marked tempos. Obadiah is played on violas and a clarinet, Elijah on cellos and horns, the accompaniment on soft strings.