Lorenzo Da Ponte

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This article is about the librettist Lorenzo da Ponte. For the Bishop of the same name, see Vittorio Veneto.
Lorenzo da PonteEngraving by Michele Pekenino after Nathaniel Rogers
Lorenzo da Ponte
Engraving by Michele Pekenino after Nathaniel Rogers

Lorenzo Da Ponte (born Emanuele Conegliano 10 March 1749 in Ceneda (now Vittorio Veneto, Italy - 17 August 1838 in Manhattan, New York) was an Venetian librettist and poet.

Contents

[edit] Life

Conegliano was a Venetian Jew by birth. His widowed father Geremia Conegliano converted himself and his three sons to Roman Catholicism in order to marry Ghella Pincherle. The 14-year-old Conegliano took the name Lorenzo Da Ponte, the name of the bishop of Ceneda who administered his baptism. He studied to be a teacher and was ordained a priest. While priest of the church of San Luca in Venice, he took a mistress, Angioletta Bellaudi, who was married. Da Ponte delivered their first child, on which he commented was "the kind of incident that happens every day". Reprimanded by the vicar-general, Da Ponte and Angioletta opened a brothel. Charged with "public concubinage and rapto di donna onesta" (abduction of a respectable woman), Da Ponte was banished from Venice for fifteen years.[1]

Da Ponte travelled to Austria, and applied for Poet to the Theatres. Asked by Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor how many plays he had written, Da Ponte replied "None, Sire", to which he replied "Good, good! Then we shall have a virgin muse.".[1]

As court librettist, he composed in French, German, Spanish, and Italian, and collaborated with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Antonio Salieri and Vicente Martín y Soler.

Da Ponte moved to Paris, London, New York City and 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, and, through him, gained an appointment as the first Professor of Italian Literature at Columbia College. He was the first faculty member to have been born a Jew, and also the first to have been ordained a priest.

In 1828, at the age of 79, Da Ponte became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

All of Da Ponte's works were adaptations of pre-existing plots, as was common among librettists of the time, with the exceptions of L'arbore di Diana with Vicente Martín y Soler, and Così fan tutte, which he began with Salieri, but completed with Mozart.

[edit] Works

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b L. de Ponty's Wagon, THE LIBERTINE LIBRETTIST (292 pp.) — April FitzLyon — Abelard-Schuman in Time magazine dated Monday, March 11, 1957, online at time.com (accessed 22 June 2008)
  2. ^ Anthony Holden, pp.113-6
  • Russo, Joseph Louis. Lorenzo Da Ponte Poet and Adventurer. Columbia University studies in romance philology and literature. New York: AMS Press, 1966. googlebooks.com Accessed October 15, 2007

[edit] Bibliography

  • FitzLyon, April, The Libertine Librettist (1955)
  • 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
  • Hüttler, Michael (ed.): Lorenzo Da Ponte. Vienna: Böhlau, 2007 (Maske & Kothurn, 52/4) (ISBN 978-3-205-77617-8)
  • 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
  • Da Ponte, Lorenzo, "Libretti viennesi", a cura di Lorenzo della Chà, Milano-Parma: Fondazione Bembo-Ugo Guanda Editore, 1999, due volumi. ISBN 88-8246-060-6
  • Da Ponte, Lorenzo, "Estratto delle Memorie", a cura di Lorenzo della Chà, Milano: Edizioni Il Polifilo, 1999. ISBN 88-7050-438-7
  • Da Ponte, Lorenzo, "Il Mezenzio", a cura di Lorenzo della Chà, Milano: Edizioni Il Polifilo, 2000. ISBN 88-7050-310-0
  • Da Ponte, Lorenzo, "Saggio di traduzione libera di Gil Blas", a cura di Lorenzo della Chà, Milano: Edizioni Il Polifilo, 2002. ISBN 88-7050-461-1
  • Da Ponte, Lorenzo, "Dante Alighieri", a cura di Lorenzo della Chà, Milano: Edizioni Il Polifilo, 2004. ISBN 88-7050-462-X
  • Da Ponte, Lorenzo, "Saggi poetici", a cura di Lorenzo della Chà, Milano: Edizioni Il Polifilo, 2005. ISBN 88-7050-463-8
  • Da Ponte, Lorenzo, "Libretti londinesi" a cura di Lorenzo della Chà, Milano: Edizioni Il Polifilo, 2007. ISBN 88-7050-464-6

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorenzo_Da_Ponte"
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