Da ponte biography
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Lorenzo Da Ponte: An Operatic Casanova
Today, the librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte is best known for his three collaborations with Mozart: Le Nozze di Figaro (), Don Giovanni (), and Così fan tutte (). Yet his biography is as colorful and exciting as anything he placed on the opera stage. The son of a tanner born in in the Veneto region of Italy (which includes Venice), Da Ponte was trained as a priest. Not long after his ordination, however, his penchant for liberal opinions and married women led to his expulsion from religious orders and banishment from Venice.
Only a few years later, he was insinuating himself into the literary elite of several European capitals and finding a comfortable home in Vienna, where he was the official theater poet at the Habsburg court under Emperor Joseph II (his patron). There, he specialized in writing Italian opera texts for the court composers Antonio Salieri and Vicente Martín y Soler—and for Mozart, although the latte
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Lorenzo Da Ponte
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Poet, b. at Cenada, Italy, ; d. in New York, 17 Aug., He was the son of a Jew and was at first named Emmanuel Conegliano. When he was fourteen years old his father and the other members of the family embraced Christianity and were baptized, 20 Aug., , in the cathedral of Ceneda. The bishop of the see, Lorenzo Da Ponte, seeing the talents of the lad, gave him his own name and sent him to the local seminary to be educated. Here Da Ponte remained for fem years, and then went to teach in the University of Treviso. Political complications sent him to Vienna, where he met Mozart and composed for him the librettos of the operas "Le Nozze di Figaro", "Don Giovanni", and "Cosi fan tutte". He did not remain long in Vienna, but went to London, whence, after a somewhat
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Lorenzo da Ponte
Italian librettist Lorenzo da Ponte (–) was one of the most significant librettists of his day and a key figure in the rise of the Viennese opera buffa. Today he is best known for the librettos of Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte.
Da Ponte was born Emmanuele Conegliano in Ceneda and adopted the name Da Ponte in when his father converted from Judaism to Christianity. He trained for the priesthood and was ordained in , but in was exiled from Venice for his politics and his adultery. He travelled to Dresden where he worked with Caterino Mazzolà, who recommended him to Salieri in Vienna. In he was appointed poet to the court theatre in Vienna. He had his first success as a librettist in with Il burbero di buon cuore by Martín y Soler, and that year wrote five further librettos, including Le nozze di Figaro. Over the next few years he worked extensively with Salieri and Martín y Soler, but after the death of Joseph II he was dis