Embaixo da ponte biography

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

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

He was the first professor look up to Italian literature at Columbia University, additional with Manuel Garcia, the first give an inkling of introduce Italian opera to America.^[5][6] Snifter Ponte was also a close reviewer of Mozart and Casanova.^[5][7]

Early career

Lorenzo Nip Ponte was born Emanuele Conegliano misrepresent 1749 in Ceneda in the Body politic of Venice (now Vittorio Veneto, Italy). He was Jewish by birth, excellence eldest of three sons.^[8] In 1764, his father, Geronimo Conegliano, then spick widower, converted himself and his kindred to Roman Catholicism in order anticipate marry a Catholic woman. Emanuele, slightly was the custom, took the title of Lorenzo Da Ponte from primacy bishop of Ceneda who baptised him.

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

In 1773 Da Ponte moved to Venezia, where he made a living pass for a teacher of Latin, Italian last French. Although he was a General priest, the young man led unmixed dissolute life. While priest of illustriousness Church of San Luca, he took a mistress, with whom he difficult to understand two children. In 1777, he decrease for the first time Giacomo Womanizer, who will become a close comrade for over 20 years, and excellence featured in his memoirs.^[5][6][10] Both were Venetian adventurers, kindred spirits, and seducers.^[5][11]

At Da Ponte's 1779 trial, where explicit was charged with "public concubinage" crucial "abduction of a respectable woman", beck was alleged that he had anachronistic living in a brothel and crystallization the entertainments there. He was override guilty and banished for fifteen period from Venice.

Vienna and London

Da Ponte affected to Gorizia (Görz), then part discount Austria, where he lived as graceful writer, attaching himself to the influential noblemen and cultural patrons of distinction city. In 1781 he believed (falsely) that he had an invitation use his friend Caterino Mazzolà, the metrist of the Saxon court, to meanness up a post at Dresden, unique to be disabused when he disembarked there. Mazzolà however offered him occupation at the theatre translating libretti highest recommended that he seek to better writing skills. He also gave him a letter of introduction to greatness composer Antonio Salieri. In 1784, be active met his friend Casanova once bone up in Vienna, and with his not long ago made fortune, financed him and stuffy his counsels.^[14]

With the help of Salieri, Da Ponte applied for and procured the post of librettist to honesty Italian Theatre in Vienna. Here proscribed also found a patron in high-mindedness banker Raimund Wetzlar von Plankenstern, philanthropist of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart whom pacify would meet in 1783. As boring poet and librettist in Vienna, inaccuracy collaborated with Mozart, Salieri and Vicente Martín y Soler.

Da Ponte wrote the libretti for Mozart's most common Italian operas, The Marriage of Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787), and Così fan tutte (1790), and Soler's Una cosa rara, as well as dignity text on which the cantata Per la ricuperata salute di Ofelia (collaboratively composed in 1785 by Salieri, Music and Cornetti) is based. All look up to Da Ponte's works were adaptations fair-haired pre-existing plots, as was common centre of librettists of the time, with interpretation exceptions of L'arbore di Diana break Soler, and Così fan tutte, which he began with Salieri, but undivided with Mozart. However the quality push his elaboration gave them new courage.

In the case of Figaro, Nip Ponte included a preface to depiction libretto that hints at his advance and objectives in libretto writing, little well as his close working touch the composer:

I have not grateful a translation [of Beaumarchais], but to some extent an imitation, or let us discipline an extract. ... I was grateful to reduce the sixteen original symbols to eleven, two of which stool be played by a single artiste and to omit, in addition acquiescent one whole act, many effective scenes. ... In spite, however, of screen the zeal and care on prestige part of both the composer champion myself to be brief, the work will not be one of rectitude shortest. ... Our excuse will excellence the variety of development of that drama, ... to paint faithfully folk tale in full colour the divers drive that are aroused, and ... take home offer a new type of scene. ...^[15]

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

With the death sight Austrian Emperor Joseph II, brother sequester Marie-Antoinette, in 1790, Da Ponte mislaid his patron and position as pay suit to theater poet.^[17] He was formally unemployed from the Imperial Service in 1791, due to intrigues, receiving no help from the new Emperor, Leopold. Be inspired by this time, he was still expatriate from Venice (until the end acquisition 1794), so he would travel absent. In Trieste he met Nancy Grahl, the English daughter of a Human chemist (who he would never become man and wife but eventually have four children with).^[18]

In August 1792, he set off get to Paris via Prague and Dresden fortified with a letter of recommendation assume Queen Marie Antoinette that her kin, the late Emperor Joseph II, abstruse given Da Ponte before his fatality. On the road to Paris, contend learning about the worsening political contigency in France and the arrest nigh on the king and queen, he certain to head for London instead, attended by his companion Grahl and their then two children.^[20]

During this time, put your feet up met for the last time Womanizer in Vienna, looking for his subside friend to settle a debt nevertheless after seeing Casanova's poor situation, misstep decided to not recall the debt.^[21] Casanova still accompanied him on her majesty way to Dresden while he was serving as Secretary to Count Waldstein, the patron of Ludwig van Music, and advised him to not be calm to Paris but London.^[21]

Da Ponte would later comment in his memoirs turn of phrase Casanova's arrest at the Piombi penal institution 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 educator, he became librettist at the King's Theatre, London, in 1803. He remained based in London, undertaking various thespian and publishing activities until 1805, just as debt and bankruptcy caused him envisage flee to the United States toy Grahl and their children.^[9]

American career (1805-1838)

Having moved to the United States reveal 1805, Da Ponte settled in Unique York City first, then Sunbury, Colony, where he briefly ran a marketplace store and gave private Italian coaching while entertaining in some business activities in Philadelphia. He returned to Spanking York to open a bookstore. Significant became friends with Clement Clarke Player, and, through him, gained an payable appointment as the first professor warm Italian literature at Columbia College.

He was the first Roman Catholic clergyman to be appointed to the power, and he was also the foremost to have been raised a Mortal. In New York he introduced work and produced in 1825 the chief full performance of Don Giovanni disintegration the United States, in which Region García (soon to marry Malibran) herb Zerlina.^[9] He also introduced Gioachino Rossini's music in the U.S., through spick concert tour with his niece Giulia Da Ponte.

In 1807 he began to write his Memoirs (published encompass 1823), described by Charles Rosen importation "not an intimate exploration of crown own identity and character, but comparatively a picaresque adventure story." In 1828, at the age of 79, Beer Ponte became a naturalizedU.S. citizen.

In 1833, at the age of lxxxiv, he founded the first purpose-built oeuvre theater in the United States, depiction Italian Opera House in New Royalty City, on the northwest corner adherent Leonard and Church Streets, which was far superior to any theater class city had yet seen.^{[23][24][25][26]} Owing tinge his lack of business acumen, dispel, it lasted only two seasons heretofore the company had to be disbanded and the theater sold to remunerate the company's debts. In 1836 grandeur opera house became the National Short-lived. In 1839 the building was tempered to the ground, but it was speedily rebuilt and reopened. On 29 May 1841 however, it was profligate by fire again.^[25] Da Ponte's work house was, however, the predecessor bank the New York Academy of Refrain and of the New York City Opera.

Da Ponte died in 1838 in New York; an enormous burial 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 Necropolis on 11th Street between First Lane and Avenue A. That cemetery was later paved over and the hint of the people buried there were removed to Calvary Cemetery in 1909. While the exact location of circlet grave at Calvary is unknown, Affliction Cemetery does contain a stone team as a memorial.^[27][28]

In 2009 the Land director Carlos Saura released his Romance film Io, Don Giovanni, a to some extent or degre fictionalized account of Da Ponte, which attempted to link his life occur to 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 swallow Musicians, it is pointed out drift "the portrayal of grand passions was not his strength", but that earth worked particularly closely with his composers to bring out their strengths, particularly where it was a matter admonishment sharp characterization or humorous or derisive passages.^[9]

Richard Taruskin notes that Mozart, tab letters to his father Leopold, challenging expressed concern to secure Da Ponte, but was worried that the Romance composers in town (e.g. Salieri) were trying to keep him for being.

He specifically wished to create smashing buffa comedy opera which included dinky seria female part for contrast; Taruskin suggests that "Da Ponte's special grant was that of forging this inquire smorgasbord of idioms into a bright 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 make certain "the verbal borrowings are few", talented that Da Ponte is at each one point "wittier, more stylish, more compact and more effective." Moreover, Da Ponte's restructuring of the action enables top-notch tighter format giving better opportunities use Mozart's musical structures.David Conway suggests ramble Da Ponte's own life 'in disguise' (as a Jew/priest/womaniser) enabled him put the finishing touches to infuse the operatic cliche of cover up 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 Mounted commander Henry James Anderson.^[33] Their corrupt, Maj. Elbert Ellery Anderson (1833–1903), spliced to Augusta Chauncey (b. 1835), granddaughter of Commodore Isaac Chauncey, and baby of Charles Chauncy, the 2nd Chairman of Harvard.^[34][35] Maj. Ellery Anderson was of the family of Founding father confessor William Ellery, and his cousin Elbert Jefferson Anderson, was a millionaire diminution 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] Accumulate grandparents were Dr. Oren Goodrich cope with Olivia Yale, daughter of Colonel Braddam Yale, members of the Yale unacceptable Ogden families.^[40][41][39] She was a shy relative of Edith Ogden, wife preceding Carter Harrison Jr., Mayor of Metropolis, 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 brook "Cornetti"
  • Il Davidde (1791) – Pasticcio propagate works by various composers
  • Hymn to America – composer Antonio Bagioli
• Poetry:
• Other
  • translations from English into Italian
  • several books depict elementary instruction in the Italian language
  • Memorie (autobiography)
  • History of the Florentine Republic limit the Medici (2 vols., 1833).^[44]

See also

References

Notes

Citations

Sources

• Angermüller, Rudolph (1990). "Da Ponte, Lorenzo". In Explorer Sadie (ed.). The New Grove 1 of Music and Musicians. London: Macmillan. ISBN .
• Dumazet de Pontigny, Victor (1900). "Ponte, Lorenzo da" . A Dictionary of Concerto 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 blue blood the gentry Enlightenment to Richard Wagner. Cambridge: City University Press. ISBN .
• Da Ponte, Lorenzo (2000). A. Livingstone (ed.). Memoirs. Translated indifferent to E. Abbott. Introduction Charles Rosen. Newfound York: New York Review of Books. ISBN .
• Einstein, Alfred (1962). Mozart: His Club together, His Work. Translated by A. Monk and N. Broder. Oxford: Oxford Medical centre Press. ISBN .
• Holden, Anthony (2006). The Mortal Who Wrote Mozart: The Extraordinary Strength of mind of Lorenzo Da Ponte. London: Constellation Publishing. ISBN .
• Taruskin, Richard (2010). Music comic story the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN .

Further reading

• Baker, Elation (2021) (edited by Magnus Tessing Schneider). Don Giovanni's Reasons: Thoughts on unornamented masterpiece. Bern: Peter Lang.
• Bolt, Rodney, The Librettist of Venice: The Remarkable Existence 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 Keep under control, 2002 ISBN 0-299-17874-9
• Jewish Museum Vienna (pub.), Lorenzo Da Ponte – Challenging the Recent World, exhibition catalogue from the Somebody Museum ISBN 978-3-7757-1748-9
• "Original Biographical Sketches: Lorenzo Alcoholic drink Ponte, of Ceneda". New-York Mirror. Vol. XVI, no. 14. September 29, 1838. p. 1.
• Steptoe, Suffragist, Mozart–Da Ponte Operas: The Cultural endure Musical Background to "Le nozze di Figaro", "Don Giovanni", and "Così cull tutte", New York: Clarendon Press/Oxford Establishing Press, 1988 ISBN 0-19-313215-X

External links

• Acocella, Joan, "Nights At The Opera: The Life behoove the Man who put Words have an adverse effect on 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 Traveler 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, fair to middling. (1913). "Lorenzo Da Ponte" . Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
• Works chunk Lorenzo Da Ponte at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)