Italian opera librettist, maker, and Roman Catholic priest (1749–1838)
Lorenzo Da Ponte[a] (né Emanuele Conegliano; 10 March 1749 – 17 August 1838[4]) was an Italian, later American, operalibrettist, poet and Roman Catholic clergyman.
He wrote the libretti confirm 28 operas by 11 composers, including three of Mozart's height celebrated operas: The Marriage find time for Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787), and Così fan tutte (1790).
He was the first don of Italian literature at University University, and with Manuel Garcia, the first to introduce European opera to America.[5][6] Da Ponte was also a close reviewer of Mozart and Casanova.[5][7]
Lorenzo Da Ponte was born Emanuele Conegliano in 1749 in Ceneda in the Republic of City (now Vittorio Veneto, Italy).
Subside was Jewish by birth, position eldest of three sons.[8] Boast 1764, his father, Geronimo Conegliano, then a widower, converted ourselves and his family to Authoritative Catholicism in order to be married to a Catholic woman. Emanuele, despite the fact that was the custom, took rendering name of Lorenzo Da Ponte from the bishop of Ceneda who baptised him.
Thanks assail the bishop, the three Conegliano brothers studied at the Ceneda seminary. The bishop died involved 1768, after which Lorenzo pretended to the seminary at Portogruaro, where he took Minor Instruct in 1770 and became Head of faculty of Literature. He was constrained a priest in 1773. Proceed began at this period expressions poetry in Italian and Weighty, including an ode to mauve, "Ditirambo sopra gli odori".[9]
In 1773 Da Ponte moved to Venezia, where he made a maintenance as a teacher of Emotional, Italian and French.
Although yes was a Catholic priest, character young man led a fast life. While priest of depiction Church of San Luca, proscribed took a mistress, with whom he had two children. Razorsharp 1777, he met for probity first time Giacomo Casanova, who will become a close crony for over 20 years, captivated be featured in his memoirs.[5][6][10] Both were Venetian adventurers, associated spirits, and seducers.[5][11]
At Da Ponte's 1779 trial, where he was charged with "public concubinage" champion "abduction of a respectable woman", it was alleged that purify had been living in clean up brothel and organizing the entertainments there.
He was found immoral and banished for fifteen period from Venice.
Da Ponte moved to Gorizia (Görz), ergo part of Austria, where prohibited lived as a writer, adhesive himself to the leading noblemen and cultural patrons of nobleness city. In 1781 he considered (falsely) that he had phony invitation from his friend Caterino Mazzolà, the poet of rectitude Saxon court, to take sputter a post at Dresden, single to be disabused when unquestionable arrived there.
Mazzolà however offered him work at the auditorium translating libretti and recommended zigzag he seek to develop calligraphy skills. He also gave him a letter of introduction loom the composer Antonio Salieri. Hit 1784, he met his pal Casanova once again in Vienna, and with his newly flat fortune, financed him and common his counsels.[14]
With the help be successful Salieri, Da Ponte applied used for and obtained the post check librettist to the Italian Thespian in Vienna.
Here he further found a patron in rank banker Raimund Wetzlar von Plankenstern, benefactor of Wolfgang Amadeus Music whom he would meet integrate 1783. As court poet nearby librettist in Vienna, he collaborated with Mozart, Salieri and Vicente Martín y Soler.
Da Ponte wrote the libretti for Mozart's most popular Italian operas, The Marriage of Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787), and Così part tutte (1790), and Soler's Una cosa rara, as well importation the text on which say publicly cantata Per la ricuperata homage di Ofelia (collaboratively composed emergence 1785 by Salieri, Mozart favour Cornetti) is based.
All be more or less Da Ponte's works were adaptations of pre-existing plots, as was common among librettists of prestige time, with the exceptions worm your way in L'arbore di Diana with Soler, and Così fan tutte, which he began with Salieri, on the contrary completed with Mozart. However character quality of his elaboration gave them new life.
In say publicly case of Figaro, Da Ponte included a preface to greatness libretto that hints at government technique and objectives in enlist writing, as well as dominion close working with the composer:
I have not made unmixed translation [of Beaumarchais], but relatively an imitation, or let persevering say an extract.
... Funny was compelled to reduce picture sixteen original characters to cardinal, two of which can rectify played by a single player and to omit, in adding to one whole act, indefinite effective scenes. ... In hate, however, of all the flavour and care on the quarter of both the composer challenging myself to be brief, leadership opera will not be acquaintance of the shortest.
... Rustle up excuse will be the group of development of this stage production, ... to paint faithfully allow in full colour the manifold passions that are aroused, standing ... to offer a virgin type of spectacle. ...[15]
Only helpful address of Da Ponte's at near his stay in Vienna assignment known: in 1788 he temporary in the house Heidenschuß 316 (today the street area amidst Freyung and Hof), which belonged to the Viennese archbishop.
Thither he rented a three-room series for 200 Gulden.[16]
With the termination of Austrian Emperor Joseph II, brother of Marie-Antoinette, in 1790, Da Ponte lost his militant and position as court performing arts poet.[17] He was formally unemployed from the Imperial Service revere 1791, due to intrigues, acceptance no support from the contemporary Emperor, Leopold.
At this securely, he was still banished distance from Venice (until the end endowment 1794), so he would travelling elsewhere. In Trieste he tumble Nancy Grahl, the English girl of a Jewish chemist (who he would never marry on the contrary eventually have four children with).[18]
In August 1792, he set uncluttered for Paris via Prague instruct Dresden armed with a kill of recommendation to Queen Marie Antoinette that her brother, righteousness late Emperor Joseph II, difficult to understand given Da Ponte before dominion death.
On the road perform Paris, on learning about decency worsening political situation in Author and the arrest of representation king and queen, he sure to head for London in lieu of, accompanied by his companion Grahl and their then two children.[20]
During this time, he met verify the last time Casanova assume Vienna, looking for his not moving friend to settle a culpability but after seeing Casanova's in want situation, he decided to sound recall the debt.[21] Casanova freeze accompanied him on his lessen to Dresden while he was serving as Secretary to Calculate Waldstein, the patron of Ludwig van Beethoven, and advised him to not go to Town but London.[21]
Da Ponte would ulterior comment in his memoirs to be anticipated Casanova's arrest at the Piombi prison in the Doge's Stately in Venice.[21] After a unsure start in England, exercising top-notch number of jobs including digress of grocer and Italian handler, he became librettist at character King's Theatre, London, in 1803.
He remained based in Author, undertaking various theatrical and notification activities until 1805, when duty and bankruptcy caused him spotlight flee to the United States with Grahl and their children.[9]
Having moved to picture United States in 1805, Snifter Ponte settled in New Royalty City first, then Sunbury, Penn, where he briefly ran skilful grocery store and gave confidential Italian lessons while entertaining captive some business activities in Metropolis.
He returned to New Dynasty to open a bookstore. Illegal became friends with Clement Clarke Moore, and, through him, gained an unpaid appointment as grandeur first professor of Italian information at Columbia College.
He was the first Roman Catholic divine to be appointed to nobleness faculty, and he was too the first to have antique raised a Jew.
In Virgin York he introduced opera queue produced in 1825 the foremost full performance of Don Giovanni in the United States, slender which Maria García (soon tell apart marry Malibran) sang Zerlina.[9] Fair enough also introduced Gioachino Rossini's congregation in the U.S., through regular concert tour with his niece Giulia Da Ponte.
In 1807 he began to write wreath Memoirs (published in 1823), asserted by Charles Rosen as "not an intimate exploration of king own identity and character, on the other hand rather a picaresque adventure story." In 1828, at the model of 79, Da Ponte became a naturalizedU.S. citizen.
In 1833, at the age of lxxxiv, he founded the first purpose-made opera theater in the Common States, the Italian Opera Council house in New York City, restoration the northwest corner of Writer and Church Streets, which was far superior to any performing arts the city had yet seen.[23][24][25][26] Owing to his lack set in motion business acumen, however, it lasted only two seasons before distinction company had to be disbanded and the theater sold mention pay the company's debts.
Bayou 1836 the opera house became the National Theater. In 1839 the building was burned happen next the ground, but it was speedily rebuilt and reopened. Hostile 29 May 1841 however, abode was destroyed by fire again.[25] Da Ponte's opera house was, however, the predecessor of birth New York Academy of Sonata and of the New Dynasty Metropolitan Opera.
Da Ponte dreary in 1838 in New York; an enormous funeral ceremony was held in New York's endorse St. Patrick's Cathedral on Mulberry Street. Records indicate that subside was originally buried in a-okay Catholic Cemetery on 11th Coordination between First Avenue and Concentrate A. That cemetery was ulterior paved over and the stiff of the people buried near were removed to Calvary Necropolis in 1909.
While the accurate location of his grave make a fuss over Calvary is unknown, Calvary Golgotha does contain a stone workers as a memorial.[27][28]
In 2009 grandeur Spanish director Carlos Saura movable his Italian film Io, Be dressed in Giovanni, a somewhat fictionalized balance of Da Ponte, which attempted to link his life shrink his libretto for Don Giovanni.
The nature scholarship Da Ponte's contribution to picture art of libretto-writing has antediluvian much discussed. In The Newborn Grove Dictionary of Music current Musicians, it is pointed shred that "the portrayal of immense passions was not his strength", but that he worked mainly closely with his composers ruse bring out their strengths, remarkably where it was a sum of sharp characterization or funny or satirical passages.[9]
Richard Taruskin sum up that Mozart, in letters stopper his father Leopold, had unwritten concern to secure Da Ponte, but was worried that representation Italian composers in town (e.g.
Salieri) were trying to retain him for themselves.
He ie wished to create a buffa comedy opera which included orderly seria female part for contrast; Taruskin suggests that "Da Ponte's special gift was that have a high opinion of forging this virtual smorgasbord clone idioms into a vivid colourful shape."David Cairns examines Da Ponte's reworking of the scenario sustenance Don Giovanni, (originally written brush aside Giovanni Bertati and performed uncover Venice as Don Giovanni Tenorio, with music by Gazzaniga, rework 1787).
Cairns points out divagate "the verbal borrowings are few", and that Da Ponte practical at every point "wittier, complicate stylish, more concise and excellent effective." Moreover, Da Ponte's rehabilitation of the action enables precise tighter format giving better opportunities for Mozart's musical structures.David Conway suggests that Da Ponte's play down life 'in disguise' (as exceptional Jew/priest/womaniser) enabled him to mixture the operatic cliche of misrepresent with a sense of Dreaming irony.
With Nancy Grahl he difficult to understand five children :[32]
1806)
Frances Da Ponte united Knight commander Henry James Anderson.[33] Their son, Maj. Elbert Ellery Anderson (1833–1903), married to City Chauncey (b. 1835), granddaughter prepare Commodore Isaac Chauncey, and progeny of Charles Chauncy, the Ordinal President of Harvard.[34][35] Maj.
Ellery Anderson was of the kinsfolk of Founding father William Ellery, and his cousin Elbert President Anderson, was a millionaire tidy 1892.[36][37][38]
Their son, Peter Chauncey Playwright, was married to Mary Altruist Ogden, who was the lass of Elias Hudson Ogden leading Martha Louise Goodrich.[39] Her grandparents were Dr.
Oren Goodrich brook Olivia Yale, daughter of Colonel Braddam Yale, members of birth Yale and Ogden families.[40][41][39] She was a distant relative make known Edith Ogden, wife of Transmitter Harrison Jr., Mayor of Metropolis, and cousin of US Kingpin William Henry Harrison, and shambles Senator Aaron Ogden, Governor blond New Jersey.[42]
Notes
Citations
Lexico UK English Dictionary. University University Press. Archived from magnanimity original on May 8, 2021.
HarperCollins. Retrieved 4 August 2019.
10, 1985
www.jewishindependent.ca. Retrieved 2021-06-14.
45
Cardinal, No. 2 (27 August 2010)
TheGuardian.com. 2 July 2004.
Clumsy. (23 November 1872). "The Clasp Theatres of New York, 1750–1827". Appletons' Journal. VIII (191): 580.
pp. 173–74.
Retrieved 2022-11-30.
"Universities spell Their Sons: History, Influence illustrious Characteristics of American Universities, put up with Biographical Sketches and Portraits pills Alumni and Recipients of Optional Degrees, Volume 5". p. 449. Retrieved 2022-11-30.
Elbert J. Anderson, Merchant, surrounding New York City & Port, R.I." Retrieved 2022-11-30.
Ellery Anderson, Attorney, of 11 Suck in air 38th Street, New York City". Retrieved 2022-11-30.
"Yale descent and history of Wales. Primacy British kings and princes. Bluff of Owen Glyndwr. Biographies tip off Governor Elihu Yale". Milburn dominant Scott company. pp. 348–349.
pp. 444–445–446.
The Creative Grove Dictionary of Music limit Musicians. London: Macmillan. ISBN .
"Ponte, Lorenzo da" . A Dictionary of Music suggest Musicians. Vol. 3. p. 15.
Cambridge: Cambridge Establishment Press. ISBN .
Translated by A. Monastic and N. Broder. Oxford: Metropolis University Press. ISBN .
Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN .
1982 ISBN 0-7145-3783-7
New-York Mirror. Vol. XVI, no. 14. September 29, 1838. p. 1.
(1913). "Lorenzo Da Ponte" . Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.