I wrote the first draft of the libretto for PATIENCE & SARAH back in 1981 at the suggestion of a soprano friend, Brenda Quilling, who said that despite the wide variety of roles she sang onstage, she never got to be who she really was and sing of her love for women. "Wouldn't PATIENCE & SARAH make a great opera?" she asked, referring to Isabel Miller's pioneering love story, a book that had achieved cult status in the 1970s by virtue of its refreshingly positive treatment of women in love, not to mention its nearly unprecedented happy ending. Even better, the book was inspired by a true story of two Puritan women who defied the conventions of their time to follow their hearts and live their dreams. We may have more choices today, though our motivations and our yearnings are the same: to find the lives we were born for; to live, as Sarah sings, "nice and snug and free."

Paula Kimper rescued my libretto from its drawer twelve years later and extended her experience scoring music for documentary films and theater to this new venture: a full-length chamber opera. Richard Wagner set her creative wheels in motion. Paula mustered her courage and inspiration after our week-long immersion in the RING cycle at the Metropolitan Opera in the spring of 1993.

Over the next year, we acquired the rights to the novel. I reworked the libretto with Doug Moser, Paula had drafted a few scenes, and we connected with American Opera Projects. Lori Phillips, Elaine Valby and Laure Meloy were three of the five singers in the very first reading of four scenes in November 1994. There is no substitute for the live experience, and feedback from the participants and audiences at AOP became an invaluable part of our creative process over the next few years. Arias and duets were tested and tossed. The libretto grew to four acts one summer out of fidelity to the novel, and shrank back to three out of dramatic necessity. Isabel Miller told us in one of our first meetings that she had intended to end her book exactly where we leave our pioneering women: on the Stratford boat dock, about to set sail for their new life together.

Now Patience & Sarah, the opera, sets sail from the Lincoln Center Festival. We are deeply grateful to American Opera Projects for bringing us this far, and also to our friends and families, opera lovers, and the gay and lesbian community for such generous, ongoing support. The donor list in this program is a testament of faith.

"Who knows what the future holds?" sings Patience at the end of the opera. The spirits of Mary Ann Willson and Miss Brundage are in our hearts, and we look forward to seeing where our pioneering "artist maid" and "farmer maid" will journey next.

Four years ago, Paula Kimper and Wende Persons brought me a cassette containing two arias from an opera they had just begun. That creative germ has developed into the full three-act opera that tonight will receive international exposure. How did it happen? The development of operas takes place on a case-by-case basis, with each project needing a little more of this and a little more of that, but always more. The constant ingredients are plenty of time, a professional home base, solid organizational backing, and artistic and financial support.

Patience & Sarah is Ms. Persons' and Ms. Kimper's first opera, but their talent and skills have been evident from the start: a dramatic understanding for the adaptation of a classic cult novel to operatic form, sensitive ears, a keen sense of narrative, and a gift for composing for operatic voices. These qualities complemented and reinforced one another as the creators worked to bring this timely and timeless subject to the stage.

American Opera Projects contributed the tangible resources of commissioning money, a nurturing artistic environment, its own rehearsal and performance space, and a dedicated office and artistic staff. Over the past four years, we have organized and produced more than a dozen workshops and performances as well as numerous fund-raisers. I would like to acknowledge the collective talent, which has included two producers, three narrators, four Patiences, two Sarahs, two Pa Dowlings, three Ma Dowlings, four Rachel Dowlings, three Parson Peels, five Martha Whites, and six Edward Whites, as well as three music directors and two stage directors. My thanks to John Rockwell who came to see a workshop version and shared our vision. I trust you will be moved as I am by this beautiful new work.

Isabel Miller (author of the novel, Patience & Sarah) died at her home in upstate New York in the fall of 1996 after a long illness. She had been an enthusiastic supporter of Kimper and Persons' opera based on her most popular novel: "So nice to have my dear girls in good hands." Her other books include The Love of Good Women, Side by Side, Laurel, and the story collection, A Dooryard Full of Flowers.

Mary Ann Willson's visionary watercolors are featured in an exhibition at the Museum of American Folk Art/Eva and Morris Feld Gallery through September 27, 1998. The gallery is located at Lincoln Square, Columbus Avenue between 65th and 66th Streets and is open Tuesday-Sunday 11:30 am - 7:30 pm. Admission is free; the gallery is closed on Mondays. (212) 595-9533.