Memoirs Of Lorenzo Da Ponte

Description

Plot and counter plot -the substance of Don Giovanni, Cosi fan tutte and The Marriage of Figaro, the three brilliant libretti that Lorenzo da Ponte wrote for Mozart - were also central to Da Ponte's own extraordinary life. His memoirs record a fantastic variety of romantic, political, and professional intrigues, and tell of meetings with a host of remarkable people. In a life that took him from the canals of Venice to the streets of New York, Da Ponte was at different times a priest, professional gambler, proprietor of a bordello, political agitator, court poet, impresario, grocery-store owner, and the first professor of Italian literature at Columbia University. This is a picaresque and engrossing story of a genius with an unequalled flair for self-dramatization and survival.

Lorenzo Da Ponte (1749-1838) was recognized as a musical prodigy at a young age. He moved to Vienna where he met Mozart and composed three libretti for him. He then moved to London and after a somewhat chequered career emigrated to New York. After several unsuccessful and unprofitable ventures to establish opera in the city he settled down as a Professor of Italian at Columbia University.

"I shall speak of things...so singular in their oddity as in some manner to instruct, or at least entertain, without wearying." -Lorenzo Da Ponte "[Da Ponte] was in the course of his lifetime the friend of Mozart, the confidante of Casanova, and the protege of the author of The Night Before Christmas...To savor to the full the richness produced by the commingling of such exotic ingredients one must sit down with the Memoirs and follow the gifted vagabond step by step." -Thomas G. Bergin, Yale University