« Une splendide anomalie ? », le Pilgrim’s Progress de Ralph Vaughan Williams by Gilles Couderc

“…First performed on April 26, 1951, at Covent Garden, four–act opera Ralph Vaughan Williams’s The Pilgrim’s Progress after John Bunyan’s eponymous Christian allegory, was then called “a magnificent anomaly” by the composer’s colleague Rutland Boughton, and continues to garner the same criticism as then : “beautiful music but not theatrical enough”. …”
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L’Opéra en version anglaise : un enjeu esthétique ou sociologique ? by Pierre Degott

“…A close scrutiny of the London theatre seasons of the XVIIIth and XIXth centuries does indeed show a strong split, in terms of aesthetic and sociological considerations, between, on the one hand, the aristocratic Italian seasons of the King’s Theatre in Covent Garden, and the English opera seasons organised by the "lesser" theatres on the other. …”
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