Winner of the National Opera Associations New Opera Competition for new one-act operas in 1986, The Gentle Boy is based on the 1832 short story of the same name written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The opera is set in the midst of the bitter and violent tensions between the Quakers and Puritans of 17th-century New England. In a humane act, a Puritan couple adopts a young Quaker boy whose father has been murdered by Puritans and whose mother is missing. The conflict between the Puritan communitys hostilities toward the boy and the couples acceptance of him has eventual tragic consequences: the boy is stoned to death by community members. Despite this, followers of both groups continue to affirm their own positions, and the adopted mother, Sarah, restates her belief in the mercy of God and eventual peace in the afterlife.

1980, revised 1987

Composer’s note:The One Act Opera, THE GENTLE BOY, was the project for which I was granted a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 1979-80. It is the first of a pair of one-act operas based on short stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne. THE GENTLE BOY is a tragic story about the persecution of the Quakers by the Puritans in 17th Century Massachusetts and the death of a young boy. THE GENTLE BOY was the winner of the National Opera Association Prize for a New Chamber Opera in 1986. (Its companion piece, on the other hand, is a comic opera called THE MAGIC PIPE (1990) based on the Hawthorne story called Feathertop. THE MAGIC PIPE was one of three finalists in the National Opera Association competition in 1992.)