Composer Robert Ward wrote an opera in 1961 based on Miller's play. The tension and life-or-death significance of the action in The Crucible lends itself to operatic drama. Ward's opera won the Pulitzer Prize in 1962.
The music chosen for a film adaptation usually echoes the mood of the story. Listen to George Fenton's score while you read the play for heightened drama.
In 2003, songwriters Tom Flannery and Lorne Clark set themselves the goal of writing a song a week, which they posted—lyrics and music included—for free on their blog. In February 2005, the week of Arthur Miller's death, they wrote this song in tribute to him.
Miller co-wrote the libretto for this opera, which is based on a one-act play Miller wrote in 1955. It focuses on life among New York's dockworkers. Miller and his friend Elia Kazan discussed this idea some years earlier—for Miller it became A View from the Bridge, and for Kazan it became the film On the Waterfront.
Miller's second (and certainly most famous) wife is an American icon in her own right. Some of her breathy renditions are classics—"Happy Birthday Mr. President," "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend"—and others presage her sad end, like the song "After You Get What You Want (You Don't Want It)." She and Miller secretly dated before he left his wife to marry the actress—let's hope the song isn't about him.