Lorenzo Da Ponte

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Lorenzo da Ponte
Lorenzo da Ponte

Lorenzo Da Ponte, born Emanuele Conegliano (March 10, 1749 – August 17, 1838) was an Italian librettist and poet born in Ceneda (now Vittorio Veneto). He is most famous for having written the librettos to three Mozart operas, Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte. Many of his works belonged to the Opera buffa genre.

Da Ponte was a Jew by birth who later converted to Roman Catholicism, and trained in separate instances to be a priest and a teacher. However, he was unable to conduct himself in a manner befitting either profession, and so was banned from both fields, and later exiled from Venice. Da Ponte worked in Dresden, and later Vienna, where he collaborated with Mozart and Antonio Salieri. He was appointed court librettist to Joseph II, for whom he composed libretti in many different languages, including French, German, and Italian. While in Vienna he also worked with composers Vicente Martín y Soler and Antonio Salieri.

Da Ponte moved from Paris to London to New York City to Philadelphia, where he briefly ran a grocery store and gave private Italian lessons before returning to New York to open a bookstore. He became friends with Clement Clarke Moore, the supposed author of "Twas the Night Before Christmas", and through him gained an appointment as the first Professor of Italian Literature at Columbia College (now known as Columbia University). He was the first faculty member to have been born a Jew, and also the first to have been ordained as a Roman Catholic priest. In 1828, at the age of 79, da Ponte became a naturalized citizen of the United States. [1]

Another distinction shared by him with Mozart is the fact his place of burial is unmarked. Da Ponte was originally buried in a Catholic cemetery in Manhattan near Old Saint Patrick's Cathedral. These interments were later removed to Calvary Cemetery in Queens with little attention paid to who was who. A cenotaph to Da Ponte's memory is found at Calvary.

All but two of Da Ponte's works are adaptations of pre-existing plots, as was common among librettists of the time. Le nozze di Figaro, for example, is based on a play by Pierre Beaumarchais, as is Axur re d’Ormus, which Da Ponte wrote for Salieri. The minor exception is L'arbore di Diana; the great exception Così fan tutte, an original work which he began with Salieri but completed with Mozart.

Contents

[edit] Works

  • Poetry: Da Ponte wrote poetry throughout his life, including:
    • Various laudatory poetry for royalty (and some disparaging ones)
    • A long letter of complaint in blank verse to Emperor Leopold II [1]
    • 18 sonnets in commemoration of his wife (1832)

[edit] References

  1. ^ See Anthony Holden, below, pp.113-6

[edit] Bibliography

  • Bolt, Rodney, The Librettist of Venice: The Remarkable Life of Lorenzo Da Ponte - Mozart's Poet, Casanova's Friend, and Italian Opera's Impresario in America, New York: Bloomsbury, 2006 ISBN 1596911182
  • Da Ponte, Lorenzo, Memorie, New York: 1823-27; English edition: Memoirs of Lorenzo Da Ponte, translated by Elizabeth Abbott, annotated by Arthur Livingstone. New York: The Orion Press, 1959. ISBN 0306762900
  • Hodges, Sheila, Lorenzo Da Ponte: The Life and Times of Mozart's Librettist, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002 ISBN 0299178749
  • Holden, Anthony, The Man Who Wrote Mozart: The Extraordinary Life of Lorenzo Da Ponte , London: Orion Publishing Company, 2007 ISBN 075382180X
  • Jewish Museum, Vienna (pub.), Lorenzo Da Ponte - Challenging the New World, exhibition catalogue from the Jewish Museum ISBN 978-3-7757-1748-9, ISBN 3-7757-1748-X
  • Russo, Joseph Louis, Lorenzo Da Ponte: Poet and Adventurer, New York: Columbia University Press, 1922 ISBN 0404506321
  • Steptoe, Anthony, Mozart-Da Ponte Operas: The Cultural and Musical Background to "Le nozze di Figaro", "Don Giovanni", and "Cosi fan tutte", New York: Clarendon Press/Oxford University Press, 1988 ISBN 019313215X

[edit] External Links

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