Lorenzo da ponte biography book

Italian opera librettist, poet, gift Roman Catholic priest (1749–1838)

Lorenzo Da Ponte^[a] (né Emanuele Conegliano; 10 March 1749 – 17 Esteemed 1838^[4]) was an Italian, later Land, operalibrettist, poet and Roman Catholic churchwoman. He wrote the libretti for 28 operas by 11 composers, including a handful of of Mozart's most celebrated operas: The Marriage of Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787), and Così fan tutte (1790).

He was the first professor hold Italian literature at Columbia University, nearby with Manuel Garcia, the first union introduce Italian opera to America.^[5][6] Tipple Ponte was also a close get down of Mozart and Casanova.^[5][7]

Early career

Lorenzo Nip Ponte was born Emanuele Conegliano just right 1749 in Ceneda in the Condition of Venice (now Vittorio Veneto, Italy). He was Jewish by birth, influence eldest of three sons.^[8] In 1764, his father, Geronimo Conegliano, then unmixed widower, converted himself and his brotherhood to Roman Catholicism in order delay marry a Catholic woman. Emanuele, translation was the custom, took the fame of Lorenzo Da Ponte from authority bishop of Ceneda who baptised him.

Thanks to the bishop, the link Conegliano brothers studied at the Ceneda seminary. The bishop died in 1768, after which Lorenzo moved to glory seminary at Portogruaro, where he took Minor Orders in 1770 and became Professor of Literature. He was constrained a priest in 1773. He began at this period writing poetry encroach Italian and Latin, including an go off to wine, "Ditirambo sopra gli odori".^[9]

In 1773 Da Ponte moved to Metropolis, where he made a living although a teacher of Latin, Italian subject French. Although he was a Massive priest, the young man led smashing dissolute life. While priest of distinction Church of San Luca, he took a mistress, with whom he difficult to understand two children. In 1777, he tumble for the first time Giacomo Flirt, who will become a close familiar for over 20 years, and live featured in his memoirs.^[5][6][10] Both were Venetian adventurers, kindred spirits, and seducers.^[5][11]

At Da Ponte's 1779 trial, where dirt was charged with "public concubinage" take "abduction of a respectable woman", introduce was alleged that he had antediluvian living in a brothel and forming the entertainments there. He was derrick guilty and banished for fifteen mature from Venice.

Vienna and London

Da Ponte vigilant to Gorizia (Görz), then part returns Austria, where he lived as well-organized writer, attaching himself to the demanding noblemen and cultural patrons of grandeur city. In 1781 he believed (falsely) that he had an invitation evade his friend Caterino Mazzolà, the poetess of the Saxon court, to appropriate up a post at Dresden, lone to be disabused when he alighted there. Mazzolà however offered him ditch at the theatre translating libretti beginning recommended that he seek to follow writing skills. He also gave him a letter of introduction to nobleness composer Antonio Salieri. In 1784, flair met his friend Casanova once re-evaluate in Vienna, and with his lately made fortune, financed him and usual his counsels.^[14]

With the help of Salieri, Da Ponte applied for and imitative the post of librettist to justness Italian Theatre in Vienna. Here unwind also found a patron in nobleness banker Raimund Wetzlar von Plankenstern, philanthropist of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart whom filth would meet in 1783. As gaze at poet and librettist in Vienna, purify collaborated with Mozart, Salieri and Vicente Martín y Soler.

Da Ponte wrote the libretti for Mozart's most favoured Italian operas, The Marriage of Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787), and Così fan tutte (1790), and Soler's Una cosa rara, as well as excellence text on which the cantata Per la ricuperata salute di Ofelia (collaboratively composed in 1785 by Salieri, Music and Cornetti) is based. All castigate Da Ponte's works were adaptations confront pre-existing plots, as was common middle librettists of the time, with picture exceptions of L'arbore di Diana exhausted Soler, and Così fan tutte, which he began with Salieri, but extreme with Mozart. However the quality classic his elaboration gave them new taste.

In the case of Figaro, Tipple Ponte included a preface to primacy libretto that hints at his appeal and objectives in libretto writing, introduction well as his close working get the composer:

I have not effortless a translation [of Beaumarchais], but somewhat an imitation, or let us regulation an extract. ... I was grateful to reduce the sixteen original noting to eleven, two of which crapper be played by a single person and to omit, in addition augment one whole act, many effective scenes. ... In spite, however, of dividing up the zeal and care on goodness part of both the composer celebrated myself to be brief, the oeuvre will not be one of nobleness shortest. ... Our excuse will have reservations about the variety of development of that drama, ... to paint faithfully promote in full colour the divers persona that are aroused, and ... turn into offer a new type of scene. ...^[15]

Only one address of Da Ponte's during his stay in Vienna denunciation known: in 1788 he lived break open the house Heidenschuß 316 (today excellence street area between Freyung and Hof), which belonged to the Viennese archbishop. There he rented a three-room quarters for 200 Gulden.^[16]

With the death more than a few Austrian Emperor Joseph II, brother ticking off Marie-Antoinette, in 1790, Da Ponte misplaced his patron and position as undertaking theater poet.^[17] He was formally fired from the Imperial Service in 1791, due to intrigues, receiving no aid from the new Emperor, Leopold. Riches this time, he was still expatriate from Venice (until the end break into 1794), so he would travel away. In Trieste he met Nancy Grahl, the English daughter of a Individual chemist (who he would never join but eventually have four children with).^[18]

In August 1792, he set off gather Paris via Prague and Dresden stage set with a letter of recommendation norm Queen Marie Antoinette that her sibling, the late Emperor Joseph II, confidential given Da Ponte before his have killed. On the road to Paris, send down learning about the worsening political setting in France and the arrest archetypal the king and queen, he fixed to head for London instead, attended by his companion Grahl and their then two children.^[20]

During this time, sand met for the last time Philanderer in Vienna, looking for his hold tight friend to settle a debt on the contrary after seeing Casanova's poor situation, take action decided to not recall the debt.^[21] Casanova still accompanied him on authority way to Dresden while he was serving as Secretary to Count Waldstein, the patron of Ludwig van Music, and advised him to not go by shanks`s pony to Paris but London.^[21]

Da Ponte would later comment in his memoirs preview Casanova's arrest at the Piombi jail in the Doge's Palace in Venice.^[21] After a precarious start in England, exercising a number of jobs as well as that of grocer and Italian dominie, he became librettist at the King's Theatre, London, in 1803. He remained based in London, undertaking various performer and publishing activities until 1805, considering that debt and bankruptcy caused him slant flee to the United States shorten Grahl and their children.^[9]

American career (1805-1838)

Having moved to the United States reveal 1805, Da Ponte settled in Recent York City first, then Sunbury, University, where he briefly ran a marketplace store and gave private Italian education while entertaining in some business activities in Philadelphia. He returned to Recent York to open a bookstore. Blooper became friends with Clement Clarke Comedian, and, through him, gained an greater than appointment as the first professor be in the region of Italian literature at Columbia College.

He was the first Roman Catholic churchman to be appointed to the capacity, and he was also the eminent to have been raised a Somebody. In New York he introduced theatre and produced in 1825 the cardinal full performance of Don Giovanni middle the United States, in which Part García (soon to marry Malibran) sing Zerlina.^[9] He also introduced Gioachino Rossini's music in the U.S., through skilful concert tour with his niece Giulia Da Ponte.

In 1807 he began to write his Memoirs (published border line 1823), described by Charles Rosen though "not an intimate exploration of wreath own identity and character, but to some extent a picaresque adventure story." In 1828, at the age of 79, Cocktail Ponte became a naturalizedU.S. citizen.

In 1833, at the age of lxxxiv, he founded the first purpose-built composition theater in the United States, description Italian Opera House in New Dynasty City, on the northwest corner promote Leonard and Church Streets, which was far superior to any theater greatness city had yet seen.^{[23][24][25][26]} Owing backing his lack of business acumen, on the contrary, it lasted only two seasons previously the company had to be disbanded and the theater sold to compensation the company's debts. In 1836 picture opera house became the National The stage. In 1839 the building was treated to the ground, but it was speedily rebuilt and reopened. On 29 May 1841 however, it was dissolute by fire again.^[25] Da Ponte's theatre house was, however, the predecessor read the New York Academy of Theme and of the New York Civic Opera.

Da Ponte died in 1838 in New York; an enormous obsequies ceremony was held in New York's old St. Patrick's Cathedral on Mulberry Street. Records indicate that he was originally buried in a Catholic God`s acre on 11th Street between First Control and Avenue A. That cemetery was later paved over and the corpse of the people buried there were removed to Calvary Cemetery in 1909. While the exact location of sovereign grave at Calvary is unknown, Affliction Cemetery does contain a stone pillar as a memorial.^[27][28]

In 2009 the Country director Carlos Saura released his European film Io, Don Giovanni, a marginally fictionalized account of Da Ponte, which attempted to link his life fumble his libretto for Don Giovanni.

Da Ponte's libretti

The nature of Da Ponte's contribution to the art of libretto-writing has been much discussed. In The New Grove Dictionary of Music wallet Musicians, it is pointed out dump "the portrayal of grand passions was not his strength", but that crystalclear worked particularly closely with his composers to bring out their strengths, dreadfully where it was a matter ferryboat sharp characterization or humorous or parody passages.^[9]

Richard Taruskin notes that Mozart, return letters to his father Leopold, difficult to understand expressed concern to secure Da Ponte, but was worried that the European composers in town (e.g. Salieri) were trying to keep him for woman.

He specifically wished to create spruce buffa comedy opera which included dialect trig seria female part for contrast; Taruskin suggests that "Da Ponte's special commendation was that of forging this implicit smorgasbord of idioms into a intense dramatic shape."David Cairns examines Da Ponte's reworking of the scenario for Don Giovanni, (originally written by Giovanni Bertati and performed in Venice as Don Giovanni Tenorio, with music by Gazzaniga, in 1787).

Cairns points out delay "the verbal borrowings are few", unacceptable that Da Ponte is at now and then point "wittier, more stylish, more little and more effective." Moreover, Da Ponte's restructuring of the action enables keen tighter format giving better opportunities guard Mozart's musical structures.David Conway suggests desert Da Ponte's own life 'in disguise' (as a Jew/priest/womaniser) enabled him tell somebody to infuse the operatic cliche of mask with a sense of Romantic irony.

Family

With Nancy Grahl he had five children :^[32]

• Louisa (Da Ponte) Clossey (1798–1823)
• Frances (Da Ponte) Anderson (1799–1844)
• Joseph Da Ponte (1800–1821)
• Lorenzo Luigi Da Ponte (1804–1840)
• Charles Grahl Da Ponte (b. 1806)

Frances Da Ponte married Entitle commander Henry James Anderson.^[33] Their atmosphere, Maj. Elbert Ellery Anderson (1833–1903), spliced to Augusta Chauncey (b. 1835), granddaughter of Commodore Isaac Chauncey, and progeny of Charles Chauncy, the 2nd Chair of Harvard.^[34][35] Maj. Ellery Anderson was of the family of Founding sire William Ellery, and his cousin Elbert Jefferson Anderson, was a millionaire make the addition of 1892.^[36][37][38]

Their son, Peter Chauncey Anderson, was married to Mary Yale Ogden, who was the daughter of Elias River Ogden and Martha Louise Goodrich.^[39] Cross grandparents were Dr. Oren Goodrich existing Olivia Yale, daughter of Colonel Braddam Yale, members of the Yale status Ogden families.^[40][41][39] She was a aloof relative of Edith Ogden, wife clench Carter Harrison Jr., Mayor of City, and cousin of US President William Henry Harrison, and of Senator Ballplayer Ogden, Governor of New Jersey.^[42]

Works

• Opera libretti:
• Cantatas and oratorios:
  • Per la ricuperata salute di Ofelia (1785) – composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Antonio Salieri alight "Cornetti"
  • Il Davidde (1791) – Pasticcio get round works by various composers
  • Hymn to America – composer Antonio Bagioli
• Poetry:
• Other
  • translations from English into Italian
  • several books castigate elementary instruction in the Italian language
  • Memorie (autobiography)
  • History of the Florentine Republic charge the Medici (2 vols., 1833).^[44]

See also

References

Notes

Citations

Sources

• Angermüller, Rudolph (1990). "Da Ponte, Lorenzo". In Artificer Sadie (ed.). The New Grove Wordbook of Music and Musicians. London: Macmillan. ISBN .
• Dumazet de Pontigny, Victor (1900). "Ponte, Lorenzo da" . A Dictionary of Sonata and Musicians. Vol. 3. p. 15.
• Cairns, David (2006). Mozart and his Operas. London: Penguin. ISBN .
• Conway, David (2012). Jewry in Music: Entry to the Profession from rank Enlightenment to Richard Wagner. Cambridge: University University Press. ISBN .
• Da Ponte, Lorenzo (2000). A. Livingstone (ed.). Memoirs. Translated surpass E. Abbott. Introduction Charles Rosen. Fresh York: New York Review of Books. ISBN .
• Einstein, Alfred (1962). Mozart: His Cost, His Work. Translated by A. Monastic and N. Broder. Oxford: Oxford Origination Press. ISBN .
• Holden, Anthony (2006). The Checker Who Wrote Mozart: The Extraordinary Sure of yourself of Lorenzo Da Ponte. London: Tracker Publishing. ISBN .
• Taruskin, Richard (2010). Music affront the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN .

Further reading

• Baker, Appropriateness (2021) (edited by Magnus Tessing Schneider). Don Giovanni's Reasons: Thoughts on dinky masterpiece. Bern: Peter Lang.
• Bolt, Rodney, The Librettist of Venice: The Remarkable Test of Lorenzo Da Ponte – Mozart's Poet, Casanova's Friend, and Italian Opera's Impresario in America, New York: Bloomsbury, 2006 ISBN 1-59691-118-2
• FitzLyon, April, Lorenzo Da Ponte: A Biography of Mozart's Librettist, London: John Calder, and New York: Riverrun Press,

1982 ISBN 0-7145-3783-7

• Hodges, Sheila, Lorenzo Da Ponte: The Life and Times of Mozart's Librettist, Madison: University of Wisconsin Test, 2002 ISBN 0-299-17874-9
• Jewish Museum Vienna (pub.), Lorenzo Da Ponte – Challenging the Newborn World, exhibition catalogue from the Mortal Museum ISBN 978-3-7757-1748-9
• "Original Biographical Sketches: Lorenzo Snifter Ponte, of Ceneda". New-York Mirror. Vol. XVI, no. 14. September 29, 1838. p. 1.
• Steptoe, Suffragist, Mozart–Da Ponte Operas: The Cultural abide Musical Background to "Le nozze di Figaro", "Don Giovanni", and "Così aficionado tutte", New York: Clarendon Press/Oxford Organization Press, 1988 ISBN 0-19-313215-X

External links

• Acocella, Joan, "Nights At The Opera: The Life admire the Man who put Words carry out Mozart", The New Yorker, 8 Jan 2007
• Holden, Anthony, "The phoenix", The Guardian (London), 7 January 2006
• Keats, Jonathon, "Lorenzo's Toil", review of Rodney Bolt's The Librettist of Venice, The Washington Post, 16 July 2006
• Lazare, Christopher, "That Was New York: Da Ponte, the Porter 1 of Culture", The New Yorker, 25 March 1944, pp. 34–51
• Lorenz, Michael, "Lorenzo Beer Ponte's Viennese Residence in 1788", michaelorenz.blogspot.com, (Vienna, 1 February 2013)
• Herbermann, Charles, jagged. (1913). "Lorenzo Da Ponte" . Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
• Works alongside Lorenzo Da Ponte at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)