Lorenzo Da Ponte[a] (né Emanuele Conegliano; 10 March 1749 – 17 August 1838[4]) was anItalian, later American[5]librettist, poet andRoman Catholic priest. He wrote the libretti for 28 operas by 11 composers, including three ofMozart's most celebrated operas:The Marriage of Figaro (1786),Don Giovanni (1787), andCosì fan tutte (1790).
He was the first professor of Italian literature atColumbia University, and withManuel Garcia, the first to introduceItalian opera to America.[6][7] Aside from his relationship with Mozart, Da Ponte was also a close friend ofCasanova.[6][8]
Lorenzo Da Ponte was born Emanuele Conegliano in 1749 in Ceneda in theRepublic of Venice (nowVittorio Veneto, Italy). He wasJewish by birth, the eldest of three sons.[9] In 1764, his father, Geronimo Conegliano, then a widower, converted himself and his family toRoman Catholicism in order to marry a Catholic woman. Emanuele, as was the custom, took the name of Lorenzo Da Ponte from thebishop ofCeneda whobaptised him.
Thanks to the bishop, the three Conegliano brothers studied at the Ceneda seminary. The bishop died in 1768, after which Lorenzo moved to the seminary atPortogruaro, where he tookMinor Orders in 1770 and became Professor of Literature. He wasordained a priest in 1773. He began at this period writing poetry in Italian and Latin, including an ode to wine, "Ditirambo sopra gli odori".[10]
In 1773 Da Ponte moved to Venice, where he made a living as a teacher of Latin, Italian and French. Although he was a Catholic priest, the young man led a dissolute life. While priest of theChurch of San Luca, he took a mistress, with whom he had two children. In 1777 he metGiacomo Casanova who became a close friend for over 20 years and was featured in his memoirs.[6][7][11] Both were Venetian adventurers, kindred spirits, and seducers.[6][12]
At Da Ponte's 1779 trial, where he was charged with "public concubinage" and "abduction of a respectable woman", it was alleged that he had been living in abrothel and organizing the entertainments there. He was found guilty and banished for fifteen years from Venice.[13]
Da Ponte moved toGorizia (Görz), then part of Austria, where he lived as a writer, attaching himself to the leading noblemen and cultural patrons of the city. In 1781 he believed (falsely) that he had an invitation from his friendCaterino Mazzolà, the poet of theSaxon court, to take up a post atDresden, only to be disabused when he arrived there. Mazzolà however offered him work at the theatre translating libretti and recommended that he seek to develop writing skills. He also gave him a letter of introduction to the composerAntonio Salieri.[14] In 1784, he met his friendCasanova once again in Vienna, and with his newly made fortune, financed him and received his counsels.[15]
With the help of Salieri, Da Ponte applied for and obtained the post of librettist to the Italian Theatre in Vienna. Here he also found a patron in the banker Raimund Wetzlar von Plankenstern, benefactor ofWolfgang Amadeus Mozart whom he would meet in 1783. As court poet and librettist in Vienna, he collaborated with Mozart, Salieri andVicente Martín y Soler.
Da Ponte wrote the libretti for Mozart's most popular Italian operas,The Marriage of Figaro (1786),Don Giovanni (1787), andCosì fan tutte (1790), and Soler'sUna cosa rara, as well as the text on which the cantataPer la ricuperata salute di Ofelia (collaboratively composed in 1785 by Salieri, Mozart and Cornetti) is based. All of Da Ponte's works were adaptations of pre-existing plots, as was common among librettists of the time, with the exceptions ofL'arbore di Diana with Soler, andCosì fan tutte, which he began with Salieri, but completed with Mozart. However the quality of his elaboration gave them new life.
In the case ofFigaro, Da Ponte included a preface to the libretto that hints at his technique and objectives in libretto writing, as well as his close working with the composer:
I have not made a translation [ofBeaumarchais], but rather an imitation, or let us say an extract. ... I was compelled to reduce the sixteen original characters to eleven, two of which can be played by a single actor and to omit, in addition to one whole act, many effective scenes. ... In spite, however, of all the zeal and care on the part of both the composer and myself to be brief, the opera will not be one of the shortest. ... Our excuse will be the variety of development of this drama, ... to paint faithfully and in full colour the divers passions that are aroused, and ... to offer a new type of spectacle. ...[16]
Only one address of Da Ponte's during his stay in Vienna is known: in 1788 he lived in the house Heidenschuß 316 (today the street area between Freyung and Hof), which belonged to the Viennese archbishop. There he rented a three-room apartment for 200 Gulden.[17]
With the death of AustrianEmperor Joseph II, brother ofMarie-Antoinette, in 1790, Da Ponte lost his patron and position as court theater poet.[18] He was formally dismissed from the Imperial Service in 1791, due to intrigues, receiving no support from the new Emperor,Leopold. At this time, he was still banished from Venice (until the end of 1794), so he would travel elsewhere. In Trieste he met Nancy Grahl, the English daughter of a Jewish chemist (whom he would never marry but with whom he eventually would have four children).[19]
In August 1792, he set off for Paris via Prague and Dresden armed with a letter of recommendation toQueen Marie Antoinette that her brother, the late Emperor Joseph II, had given Da Ponte before his death. On the road to Paris, on learning about the worsening political situation in France and the arrest of the king and queen, he decided to head for London instead, accompanied by his companion Grahl and their then two children.[20][21]
During this time, he met for the last timeCasanova in Vienna, looking for his old friend to settle a debt but after seeing Casanova's poor situation, he decided to not recall the debt.[22] Casanova still accompanied him on his way to Dresden while he was serving as Secretary toCount Waldstein, the patron ofLudwig van Beethoven, and advised him to not go to Paris but London.[22]
Da Ponte would later comment in his memoirs on Casanova's arrest at thePiombi prison in theDoge's Palace in Venice.[22]After a precarious start in England, exercising a number of jobs including that of grocer and Italian teacher, he became librettist at the King's Theatre, London, in 1803. He remained based in London, undertaking various theatrical and publishing activities until 1805, when debt and bankruptcy caused him to flee to the United States with Grahl and their children.[10]
Having moved to the United States in 1805, Da Ponte settled inNew York City first, thenSunbury, Pennsylvania, where he briefly ran a grocery store and gave private Italian lessons while entertaining in some business activities in Philadelphia. He returned to New York to open a bookstore. He became friends withClement Clarke Moore, and, through him, gained an unpaid appointment as the first professor of Italian literature atColumbia College.
He was the first Roman Catholic priest to be appointed to the faculty, and he was also the first to have been raised a Jew. In New York he introduced opera and produced in 1825 the first full performance ofDon Giovanni in the United States, in whichMaria García (soon to marry Malibran) sang Zerlina.[10] He also introducedGioachino Rossini's music in the U.S., through a concert tour with his niece Giulia Da Ponte.
In 1807 he began to write hisMemoirs (published in 1823), described byCharles Rosen as "not an intimate exploration of his own identity and character, but rather apicaresque adventure story."[23] In 1828, at the age of 79, Da Ponte became anaturalizedU.S. citizen.
In 1833, at the age of eighty-four, he founded the first purpose-built opera theater in the United States, the Italian Opera House in New York City, on the northwest corner ofLeonard andChurch Streets, which was far superior to any theater the city had yet seen.[24][25][26][27] Owing to his lack of business acumen, however, it lasted only two seasons before the company had to be disbanded and the theater sold to pay the company's debts. In 1836 the opera house became the National Theater. In 1839 the building was burned to the ground, but it was speedily rebuilt and reopened. On 29 May 1841 however, it was destroyed by fire again.[26] Da Ponte's opera house was, however, the predecessor of the New YorkAcademy of Music and of the New YorkMetropolitan Opera.
Da Ponte died in 1838 in New York; an enormous funeral ceremony was held in New York's oldSt. Patrick's Cathedral onMulberry Street. Records indicate that he was originally buried in a Catholic Cemetery on 11th Street between First Avenue and Avenue A. That cemetery was later paved over and the remains of the people buried there were removed toCalvary Cemetery in 1909. While the exact location of his grave at Calvary is unknown, Calvary Cemetery does contain astone marker as a memorial.[28]
In 2009 the Spanish directorCarlos Saura released his Italian filmIo, Don Giovanni, a somewhat fictionalized account of Da Ponte, which attempted to link his life with his libretto forDon Giovanni.
The nature of Da Ponte's contribution to the art of libretto-writing has been much discussed. InThe New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, it is pointed out that "the portrayal of grand passions was not his strength", but that he worked particularly closely with his composers to bring out their strengths, especially where it was a matter of sharp characterization or humorous or satirical passages.[10]
Richard Taruskin notes that Mozart, in letters to his fatherLeopold, had expressed concern to secure Da Ponte, but was worried that the Italian composers in town (e.g. Salieri) were trying to keep him for themselves.
He specifically wished to create abuffa comedy opera which included aseria female part for contrast; Taruskin suggests that "Da Ponte's special gift was that of forging this virtualsmorgasbord of idioms into a vivid dramatic shape."[29]David Cairns examines Da Ponte's reworking of the scenario forDon Giovanni, (originally written byGiovanni Bertati and performed in Venice asDon Giovanni Tenorio, with music byGazzaniga, in 1787).
Cairns points out that "the verbal borrowings are few", and that Da Ponte is at every point "wittier, more stylish, more concise and more effective." Moreover, Da Ponte's restructuring of the action enables a tighter format giving better opportunities for Mozart's musical structures.[30]David Conway suggests that Da Ponte's own life 'in disguise' (as a Jew/priest/womaniser) enabled him to infuse the operatic cliche of disguise with a sense ofRomantic irony.[31]
With Nancy Grahl he had five children :[32]
Frances Da Ponte married Knight commanderHenry James Anderson.[33] Their son, Maj. Elbert Ellery Anderson (1833–1903), married to Augusta Chauncey (b. 1835), granddaughter of CommodoreIsaac Chauncey, and descendant ofCharles Chauncy, the 2nd President ofHarvard.[34][35] Maj. Ellery Anderson was of the family of Founding fatherWilliam Ellery, and his cousin Elbert Jefferson Anderson, was a millionaire in 1892.[36][37][38]
Their son, Peter Chauncey Anderson, was married to Mary Yale Ogden, who was the daughter of Elias Hudson Ogden and Martha Louise Goodrich.[39] Her grandparents were Dr. Oren Goodrich and Olivia Yale, daughter of Colonel Braddam Yale, members of theYale andOgden families.[40][41][39] She was a distant relative ofEdith Ogden, (the wife ofCarter Harrison IV –himself amayor of Chicago and a cousin of US PresidentWilliam Henry Harrison) and of SenatorAaron Ogden (governor of New Jersey).[42]
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