Words for Lori LaitmanÆs opera, The Scarlet Letter
Based on the story by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Award-winning poet and librettist David Mason, author of Ludlow and
other books, has given new life in verse to HawthorneÆs classic novel.
By distilling the bookÆs narrative line and adding a charged lyricism of
his own, Mason has created another magnificent work in his ongoing
poetic portrait of America.
In old Boston, a young woman, Hester Prynne, has been charged with
adultery and forced to wear the scarlet letter \u201cA\u201d embroidered
on her breast. Just as she mounts the scaffold to receive her sentence,
her husband, long presumed dead and newly escaped from captivity among
the Indians, arrives and recognizes her. This man, renamed Roger
Chillingworth, begins a quest to discover the father of HesterÆs child.
As the community wrestles with whether or not to allow Hester to
continue raising her daughter, Chillingworth moves in with the pale
young minister, Arthur Dimmesdale, who hides the fact that he is the
sought-after father. In a dark night of the soul, Arthur is taunted by a
local witch, and it becomes clear that he is overcome with guilt and
inner conflict about his past with Hester. The two lovers meet in the
forest, plotting their escape, sure they can flee the laws and mores of
men in this new world. But Dimmesdale cannot forget his guilt, and
during an election day ceremony he confesses his sin to the crowd,
exposing a branded letter \u201cA\u201d over his own heart.
A tale of conflict between an astonishing woman and her thwarted and
thwarting community, of a ministerÆs guilt and a husbandÆs vengeance,
MasonÆs Scarlet Libretto casts new light on HawthorneÆs classic, on
the tension between freedom and responsibility, and on the secrets in
the human soul.
