Come To The Devil’s Fire — Mistress Hibbons’ (The Witch) aria

2008 | mezzo-soprano/piano

From The Scarlet Letter

Libretto by David Mason

Act One, Scene Four of The Scarlet Letter finds Arthur Dimmesdale sharing rooms with Roger Chillingworth, who has come to suspect Dimmesdale of adultery. Chillingworth leaves to attend to the dying governor, and when Dimmesdale awakes from a drug- induced sleep he wanders alone out into the streets, tortured by his own guilt. There he meets Mistress Hibbons, who sees the hypocrisy in the young minister, sees that he has hidden behind his pious image and even distanced himself from his own identity. In this song she taunts the minister—a sort of grotesque mirror of his guilt. — David Mason