Although set in 17th century Boston to escape the blue pencil of Roman censors who felt 18th century Sweden was too close to home, Verdi's 1859 Un Ballo in Maschera is not a generic work that could take place anywhere. We know this by the presence of Ulrica, a black woman who has just been convicted of witchcraft (the crime of 1600s New England) by a hardly objective judge who himself describes her as being of "abbietto sangue de'negri" - "the vile race of negroes." Ulrica certainly does dabble in some kind of wicca, one could say as, in Act I, Scene 9, Amelia consults her to cure her love for Riccardo, the Governor, being as she is already married to Renato, his secretary, and Ulrica describes where to obtain the herb that should do the trick: to a field west of Boston, where indeed the first scene of Act II takes place. Disguised as a sailor (a common as well as commoner's outit in that port city), Riccardo also consults Ulrica, who tells him that he will be the victim of a false friend: the first man who will shake his hand. Riccardo laughs it off. Who then appears but Renato, whom Riccardo heartily greets with a handshake. Despite almost immediately using his true authority as Governor to grant Ulrica a pardon (unusually, she was to be exiled, not burned at the stake or otherwise tortured to death), Riccardo cannot escape his fate. The jealous Renato stabs Riccardo at the Governor's ball...just as Riccardo has granted the couple a handsome posting back in England, to save the technically faithful Amelia's honor from any further temptation.
Passions ran all the way to consummated in Robert Ward's 1961 The Crucible, based on the somewhat historically-inspired Arthur Miller play of the same title. The Salem community of 1692 is up in arms about the apparent "witching" of young Betty Parris, daughter of the local minister. She and her cousin Abigail were caught dancing nude in the woods...in a culture where to dance at all was a sin. Tituba, a black slave who only yearns to go back to Barbados away from these crazy white people, is accused of leading the ceremony. Under pressure she confesses...but also lashes out, announcing that others in Salem bear the Devil's mark. However, Abigail has her own private reasons for mischief: she has had an affair with an essentially good but married older man, John Proctor, and he has now spurned her. Between the suggestibility that leads other young women to feign hysteria; the greed of the character Thomas Putnam to possess his neighbors' land by hook or by crook; and the arrival in Salem of the charismatic, witch-hunting Reverend John Hale, crowd mentality escalates to cause the arrest, trial, torture, and murder of "a hundred or more" innocent residents. John Proctor admits verbally to witchcraft as a kind of penance for his infidelity, but he refuses to bear witness against his neighbors and also refuses to sign a written confession that has been prepared for him. It's a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation -- Judge Danforth order him hanged anyway, for non-compliance!
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