Gerontius and Elgar
In October 1900, at the Birmingham Triennial Music Festival, Marie Brema created the role of the angel in the first performance of Sir Edward Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius, with Edward Lloyd and Harry Plunket Greene, under the baton of Hans Richter. The performance was not a great success, owing partly to the difficult and somewhat revolutionary nature of the composition, and the comparatively short time that had been available for the artists to prepare it. She performed it again, this time under Elgar's baton, at the 1902 Sheffield Festival, with John Coates and David Ffrangcon-Davies: in the same concert Ysaÿe played the Beethoven concerto.
In the following years the role of the angel was more often taken by the leading English contralto Louise Kirkby Lunn, also a celebrated Wagnerian singer (Ortrud, Kundry, Brangane and Fricka), Amneris and Dalilah, and in many ways a successor to Marie Brema, though without her range for a compelling Brünnhilde. In 1903, writing to Brema of her original performance, Elgar wrote 'I have, of course, in memory your fine and intellectual creation of the part; and though I never thought the 'tessitura' suited you well, as the magnificent artist you are, you made it go very finely.'
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