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NEW YORK - Jill Santoriello has been working on her stage version of Charles Dickens's "A Tale of Two Cities" for a long time - since Ronald Reagan was president.

"I'm not going to tell you which term," said the woman who wrote the book, music and lyrics for the lavish musical set against the backdrop of the French Revolution.

The production, directed and choreographed by Warren Carlyle, opens Sept. 18 at Broadway's Al Hirschfeld Theatre. Preview performances begin Aug. 19.

"I had been an old movie nut," said Santoriello, a former Showtime executive who, as a child, redirected that fascination toward musical theatre after coming into New York from her suburban New Jersey home to see shows.

She was first drawn to "Wuthering Heights" as a subject to musicalize but found the story too depressing.

Better to focus on Dickens's epic adventure - the stories of aristocratic Charles Darnay, played by Aaron Lazar, and the dissolute Sydney Carton, portrayed by James Barbour, and how they intertwine, particularly when it concerned their love for Lucie Manette, played here by Brandi Burkhardt.

"A Tale of Two Cities" was staged at the Asolo Repertory Theatre in Sarasota, Fla., last fall before finding its way to New York.

"It has been a long journey," Santoriello acknowledged, but she never thought of giving up.

"It has meant too much to me. I always felt that one day we would succeed."

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On the Net:

www.talemusical.com