Lorenzo Da Ponte

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Lorenzo Da Ponte (March 10 1749–August 17 1838) was an Italian librettist born in Ceneda (now Vittorio Veneto). He is most famous for having written the librettos to three Mozart operas, Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte. Many of his works belonged to the Opera buffa genre.

Da Ponte was a Jew by birth who later converted to Roman Catholicism, and trained in separate instances to be a priest and a teacher. However, he was unable to conduct himself in a manner befitting either profession, and so was banned from both fields, and later exiled from Venice. Da Ponte worked in Dresden, and later Vienna, where he collaborated with Mozart and Antonio Salieri. He was appointed court librettist to Joseph II, for whom he composed libretti in many different languages, including French, German, and Italian. While in Vienna he also worked with composers Vicente Martín y Soler and Antonio Salieri.

Da Ponte moved from Paris to London to New York City to Philadelphia, where he briefly ran a grocery store and gave private Italian lessons before returning to New York to open a bookstore. He became friends with Clement Clarke Moore, the supposed author of "Twas the Night Before Christmas", and through him gained an appointment as the first Professor of Italian Literature at Columbia College (now known as Columbia University). He was the first faculty member to have been born a Jew, and also the first to have been ordained as a Roman Catholic priest.

The vast majority of Da Ponte's works are adaptations of pre-existing plots, as was common among librettists of the time. Le nozze di Figaro, for example, is based on a play by Pierre Beaumarchais play, as is Axur re d’Ormus, which Da Ponte wrote for Salieri. The great exception was Così fan tutte, an original work which he began with Salieri but completed with Mozart.

[edit] Works

Opera Librettos
- Ifigenia in Tauride (1783, ital. translation of the French opera Iphigénie en Tauride - composer Christoph Willibald Gluck)
- La Scuola de' gelosi (1783, New version of the 1778 Libretto by Caterino Mazzolà) - composer Antonio Salieri
- Il Ricco d'un giorno (1784) - composer Antonio Salieri
- Il Burbero di buon cuore (1786, from the play by Carlo Goldoni) - composer Vicente Martín y Soler
- Il Demogorgone ovvero Il filosofo confuso (1786) - composer Vincenzo Righini
- Il finto cieco (1786) - composer Giuseppe Gazzaniga
- Le nozze di Figaro (1786, from the play Le Mariage de Figaro by Beaumarchais) - composer Mozart
- Una cosa rara ossia Bellezza ed onestà (1786, from the comedy La Luna della Sierra by Luis Vélez de Guevara) - composer Vicente Martín y Soler
- Gli equivoci (1786) - composer Stephen Storace
- L'arbore di Diana (1787) - composer Vincente Martín y Soler
- Il dissoluto punito o sia Il Don Giovanni (1787, from the opera Don Giovanni Tenorio by Giuseppe Gazzaniga) - composer Mozart
- Axur, re d'Ormus (1787/88, ital. translation of the libretto Tarare by Beaumarchais) - composer Antonio Salieri
- Il Talismano (1788, from Carlo Goldoni) - composer Antonio Salieri
- Il Bertoldo (1788) - composer Antonio Brunetti
- L'Ape musicale (1789) - Pasticcio of works by various composers
- Il Pastor fido (1789, from the pastoral by Giovanni Battista Guarini) - composer Antonio Salieri
- La Cifra (1789) - composer Antonio Salieri
- Così fan tutte (1789/90) - composer Mozart
- La Caffettiera bizzarra (1790) - composer Joseph Weigl
- La Capricciosa corretta (1795) - composer Vicente Martín y Soler
- Antigona (1796) - composer Giuseppe Francesco Bianchi
- Il consiglio imprudente (1796) - composer Giuseppe Francesco Bianchi
- Merope (1797) - composer Giuseppe Francesco Bianchi
- Cinna (1798) - composer Giuseppe Francesco Bianchi
- Armida (1802) - composer Giuseppe Francesco Bianchi
- La Grotta di Calipso (1803) - composer Peter von Winter
- Il Trionfo dell'amor fraterno (1804) - composer Peter von Winter
- Il Ratto di Proserpina (1804) - composer Peter von Winter

Texts for Cantatas, Oratorios, etc.
- Per la ricuperata salute di Ofelia (1785) - composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Antonio Salieri and Cornetti - lost
- Davidde penitente (1785) - composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
- Il Davidde (1791) - Pasticcio from works by various composers
- Hymn to America - composer Antonio Baglioni