There must have been at least 300 costumes, all of them created or assembled by members of the community. For the Vanity Fair sequence, depicting the folly of human obsessions, they chose their own getups: everything from Park Avenue elegance through naughty boas and bustiers to tattoos, spiked hair, chains, and leather. Revolving painted panels, platforms, chairs, and benches were also created especially for the production.
The preparation by director and conductor Elizabeth Patterson and her assistants, Sister Danielle Dwyer and Richard K. Pugsley, was meticulous; one seldom sees an operatic production as powerful in conception and polished in execution as this ''Pilgrim's Progress." This was not a Sunday-school pageant. All the participants had been encouraged to prepare their contributions through a process of self-examination. The principals pledged to undertake a ''singer's diet," avoiding fatty foods, milk, coffee, tea, and alcohol while drinking at least eight glasses of water daily. Orchestra players wrote every word of the text into their parts -- a rarity.
Vaughan Williams was preoccupied with the operatic possibilities of Bunyan's work for more than four decades before he finally brought it to the stage in 1951. He called it a ''morality" rather than an opera; although it addresses such operatic subjects as lust and redemption, it necessarily does so in an unconventional way. The music reflects the harmonies and melodic structures of hymnody and folk song; it mingles simplicity and majesty.
