Who Was Lorenzo Da Ponte? (2023)

1. Lives and Misfortunes of Lorenzo Da Ponte | The Hudson Review

• In his old age, Lorenzo Da Ponte believed that he had finally achieved a stable position in life: Italian language and literature professor at Columbia ...

•   How many lives was Lorenzo Da Ponte able to live in the eighty-nine years that took place between his birth in a Jewish ghetto outside Venice in 1749 and his death in New York? The mere outline of dates and places is already somewhat astonishing: for someone to reach such longevity at a time when the median life expectancy was under forty years, and also to be able to travel so far in a world of difficult and unsafe paths, of archaic and closed societies in which the immense majority of people grew old and died either in the same place where they had been born or not very far from it, leading a life that was identical to that of their most remote ancestors. But Lorenzo Da Ponte escapes habitual categories as audaciously as he used to escape the cities and countries where life was starting to become difficult, which in one way or another would be almost all of them, or as he would abandon jobs and even identities, possible futures in which he would have undoubtedly liked to get settled. A scarcely exhaustive enumeration already provides somewhat of a frame: he was a seminarian; he was a gambler; he taught Hebrew, classical languages, Italian literature; he was a shopkeeper in Pennsylvania and a bartender in New Jersey; he was a librettist, editor, bookseller, opera impresario; he successively practiced Judaism, Catholicism, Anglicanism; he bowed down in the ante­cham­­bers of emperors, archbishops and princes and then scribbled clandestine pamphlets against them. Reading his memoirs is as agitated an experience as witnessing the exploits, ruses, escapes, jolts, strokes of daring or of shamelessness that take place in the three Mozart operas whose librettos he wrote[1], generally with utmost speed, and during a time of his life that turns out to be quite brief in comparison to the length and variety of his disorderly biographies. Historians often say that, as a memoirist, Da Ponte is not very trustworthy. Charles Rosen observes that he usually fails to remember precisely what we would most like to hear. But if the words in these memoirs are not too exact, their music immediately becomes familiar, and in it there is no room for deception: as we read pages more replete with adventures than the wildest serial, we have the feeling of recognizing some of Don Giovanni and Leporello’s tricks and the conspiracies that baleful Bartolo and resentful Marcellina plot against Figaro and Susanna, and the games of masks and impersonations to which the couples of symmetrical lovers devote themselves in Così fan tutte no longer seem so implausible.

2. How Mozart's Librettist Became the Father of Italian Studies at Columbia

• He was Lorenzo Da Ponte, a defrocked Italian priest who twenty years earlier had written the libretti to three Mozart operas — Don Giovanni, The Marriage of ...

• The curious cross-continental tale of Lorenzo Da Ponte.

3. The life of Lorenzo Da Ponte - Glyndebourne

• A Jew who lived his life as a Catholic, Da Ponte was by turns a priest, a poet, a professional gambler and quite possibly a pimp. A man who started his career ...

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4. Lorenzo da Ponte - Royal Opera House

• Italian librettist Lorenzo da Ponte (1749–1838) was one of the most significant librettists of his day and a key figure in the rise of the Viennese opera ...

• information about Lorenzo da Ponte

5. Lorenzo Da Ponte | Librettist, Poet, Educator - Britannica

• Aug 13, 2023 · Lorenzo Da Ponte, Italian poet and librettist best known for his collaboration with Mozart. Jewish by birth, Da Ponte was baptized in 1763 ...

• Lorenzo Da Ponte, Italian poet and librettist best known for his collaboration with Mozart. Jewish by birth, Da Ponte was baptized in 1763 and later became a priest; freethinking (expressing doubts about religious doctrine) and his pursuit of an adulterous relationship, however, eventually led, in

6. Arizona Opera Cast Members & Creatives | Arizona Opera

• Lorenzo Da Ponte was born Emanuele Conegliano in 1749 in Ceneda, in the Republic of Venice (now Vittorio Veneto, Italy). Da Ponte was Jewish by birth and ...

• Lorenzo Da Ponte was born Emanuele Conegliano in 1749 in Ceneda, in the Republic of Venice (now Vittorio Veneto, Italy). Da Ponte was Jewish by birth and the eldest of three sons. In 1764, Da Ponte's father, Geronimo Conegliano, then a widower, converted himself and his family to Roman Catholicism in order to marry a Catholic woman. Emanuele, as was the custom, took the name of Lorenzo Da Ponte from the Bishop of Ceneda who baptized him.

7. Librettist Profile: The Tumultuous Life of Lorenzo Da Ponte, The Man ...

• Mar 10, 2019 · Lorenzo da Ponte, born on March 10, 1749, would go on to become one of the great librettists in the history of opera.

• Lorenzo da Ponte, born on March 10, 1749, would go on to become one of the great librettists in the history of opera. He was born Emanuele Conegliano, but when his father converted from Judaism to Catholicism to marry a Catholic woman, he took the name of Lorenza da Ponte. He studied at the Ceneda seminary and eventually moved to {…}

8. Lorenzo Da Ponte - New World Encyclopedia

• Lorenzo Da Ponte, born Emanuele Conegliano (March 10, 1749 – August 17, 1838) was an Italian librettist and poet born in Ceneda (now Vittorio Veneto).