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

by Unknown

• ISBN13: 9780753821800
• ISBN10: 075382180X
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2007-09-28
• Publisher: Phoenix

Summary

In June 1805 a 56-year-old Italian immigrant disembarked to Philadelphia carrying only a violin. Before dying in New York 23 years later, he would find New World respectability 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. Like the memoirs he wrote to pay off more debts, the old man was constantly full of tall stories. The varied lives of Lorenzo Da Ponte, librettist of Mozart's three great operasThe Marriage of Figaro,Don Giovanni, andCosi Fan Tuttebegin in Venice, linger in Vienna and London, and end in New York, where today he lies buried in an unmarked grave in one of the world's largest cemeteries.

Author Biography

Anthony Holden is known for his translating of opera libretti and is currently music critic of The Observer.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. ix
Prologue	p. xi
Veneto
The 'Clever Dunce'	p. 3
The Priest	p. 14
The Rebel	p. 23
Europe
The Poet	p. 43
The Librettist	p. 56
Le Nozze di Figaro	p. 67
Don Giovanni	p. 90
Cosi Fan Tutte	p. 102
The Married Man	p. 117
The Londoner	p. 132
The Bankrupt	p. 146
America
The Grocer	p. 163
The Professor	p. 175
The Showman	p. 195
A Note on Sources	p. 215
Acknowledgements	p. 221
Index	p. 225
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