for example, was sung at Westminster Abbey in 1904. Disapproval was reserved for the doctrinal aspects of The Dream of Gerontius repugnant to Anglicans, such as Purgatory. Elgar was unable to resist the suggested bowdlerisation, and in the ten years after the premiere the work was given at the Three Choirs Festival with an expurgated text. The Dean of Gloucester refused admission to the work until 1910. This attitude lingered until the 1930s, when the Dean of Peterborough banned the work from the cathedral. Elgar was also faced with many people's assumption that he would use the standard hymn tunes for the sections of the poem that had already been absorbed into Anglican hymn books: "Firmly I believe and truly", and "Praise to the Holiest in the Height". The Dream of Gerontius received its US premiere on 23 March 1903 at The Auditorium, Chicago, conducted by Harrison M. Wild. It was given in New York, conducted by Walter Damrosch three days later. It was performed in Sydney, in 1903. The first performance in Vienna was in 1905; the Paris premiere was in 1906; and by 1911 the work received its Canadian premiere in Toronto under the baton of the composer. In the first decades after its composition leading performers of the tenor part included Gervase Elwes and John Coates, and Louise Kirkby Lunn, Elena Gerhardt and Julia Culp were admired as the Angel. Later singers associated with the work include Muriel Foster, Clara Butt, Kathleen Ferrier, and Janet Baker as the Angel, and Heddle Nash, Steuart Wilson, Tudor Davies and Richard Lewis as Gerontius. The work has come to be generally regarded as Elgar's finest choral composition. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians rates it as "one of his three or four finest works", and the authors of The Record Guide, writing in 1956 when Elgar's music was comparatively neglected, said, "Anyone who doubts the fact of Elgar's genius should take the first opportunity of hearing The Dream of Gerontius, which remains his masterpiece, as it is his largest and perhaps most deeply felt work." In the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Michael Kennedy writes, "[T]he work has become as popular with British choral societies as Messiah and Elijah, although its popularity overseas did not survive 1914. Many regard it as Elgar's masterpiece. ... It is unquestionably the greatest British work in the oratorio form, although Elgar was right