The Man Who Wrote Mozart; The Extraordinary Life of Lorenzo Da Ponte

by Unknown

• ISBN13: 9780297850809
• ISBN10: 0297850806
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 2006-01-01
• Publisher: Orion Pub Co

Summary

In June 1805, a 56-year-old Italian immigrant disembarked in Philadelphia carrying only a violin. Before dying in New York 23 years later, in his ninetieth year, he would find New World respectability as a bookseller, then as the first Professor of Italian at Columbia University. For now, he set up shop as a grocer. There was always an air of mystery about the Abbe Lorenzo da Ponte. A scholarly poet, teacher and priest, with a devoted wife, he also had a reputation as a womanizer. Da Ponte charmed all he met, pioneering the place of Italian music in American life. But his self-assurance also excited mistrust. When the first Italian opera was performed in New York in 1825, he had the nerve to claim he had written it. He had, so he said, known Mozart. Not to mention Casanova. Like the memoirs he had recently written, to pay off more debts, the old man was so full of tall stories... The many lives of Lorenzo da Ponte - librettist of Mozart's three great operas, The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni and Cosi Fan Tutte - begin in Venice, linger in Vienna and London and wind up in New York, where today he lies buried in an unmarked grave in the world's largest cemetery. Anthony Holden's marvellous biography does justice at last to Mozart's collaborator.

Author Biography

Anthony Holden enjoyed an award-winning career at the Sunday Times before becoming a full-time writer and broadcaster 20 years ago. Also known for his translating of opera libretti, he is currently music critic of the Observer.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	ix
Prologue	xi
PART ONE: Veneto
1 The 'Clever Dunce'	3	(11)
2 The Priest	14	(9)
3 The Rebel	23	(20)
PART TWO: Europe
4 The Poet	43	(13)
5 The Librettist	56	(11)
6 Le Nozze di Figaro	67	(23)
7 Don Giovanni	90	(12)
8 Cosi Fan Tutte	102	(15)
9 The Married Man	117	(15)
10 The Londoner	132	(14)
11 The Bankrupt	146	(17)
PART THREE: America
12 The Grocer	163	(12)
13 The Professor	175	(20)
14 The Showman	195	(20)
A Note on Sources	215	(6)
Acknowledgements	221	(4)
Index	225