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Opera by Ralph Vaughan Williams

The Pilgrim's Progress is an opera by Ralph Vaughan Williams, based on John Bunyan's 1678 allegory The Pilgrim's Progress. The composer himself described the work as a 'Morality' rather than an opera. Nonetheless, he intended the work to be performed on stage, rather than in a church or cathedral. Vaughan Williams himself prepared the libretto, with interpolations from the Bible and also text from his second wife, Ursula Wood. His changes to the story included altering the name of the central character from 'Christian' to 'Pilgrim', so as to universalise the spiritual message. The musical gestation of this opera was protracted, and was reflected in a number of musical projects in Vaughan Williams' life. For example, his earlier one act opera The Shepherds of the Delectable Mountains from 1921 was incorporated into Act 4, Scene 2 of the later opera. His Symphony No. 5 also made use of themes originally conceived for his John Bunyan project. In 1940 he wrote a motet on Mr. Valiant for Truth's speech for mixed chorus. The BBC commissioned Vaughan Williams for incidental music for a 1942 radio dramatisation of The Pilgrim's Progress. Herbert Murrill has characterised the opera as "summarizing in three hours virtually the whole creative output of a great composer". The opera contains forty one individual singing roles. The first performance was at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden on 26 April 1951. The conductor was Leonard Hancock, whom Vaughan Williams had personally chosen to conduct the premiere, and the director Nevill Coghill.

The Covent Garden performances were not a success, and the company dropped the opera from its repertoire in 1952. However, a student production at the University of Cambridge in 1954 met with greater approval from the composer, notably for the performance of John Noble as Pilgrim. John Noble later recorded the role in the recording conducted by Sir Adrian Boult in 1970–71 (see Recordings below). The North American premiere was on 28 April 1969, at Brigham Young University, a collaborative effort of the College of Fine Arts and Communications, Music Department, Opera Workshop and Symphony Orchestra. It was so well received that an encore production was mounted in 1970. In 1972, the year of the centenary of the composer's birth, the work was staged at Charterhouse School, where the composer was educated, conducted by William Llewellyn and produced by Geoffrey Ford, again with John Noble as Pilgrim. It was staged again in 1992 at the Royal Northern College of Music, with Joseph Ward directing, Igor Kennaway conducting, and Richard Whitehouse singing the role of Pilgrim. Brian Bell directed the opera's Australian premiere in July 1980 performed by the Canberra Opera Society. Three semi staged productions were performed between 1997 and 2008, conducted by Richard Hickox, who also conducted a concert performance for Opera Australia in 2008. A major staged production was produced by English National Opera at the London Coliseum in November 2012, conducted by Martyn Brabbins and directed by Yoshi Oida, with Roland Wood as Pilgrim. A new production was performed in the Spring of 2019 at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, conducted by David Parry and directed by Jonathan Cocker.