Showing The Librettist of Venice: The Remarkable Life of Lorenzo da Ponte Mozart's Poet, Casanova's Friend, and Italian Opera's by Rodney Bolt

The Librettist of Venice The operatic life of the librettist for "Don Giovanni" and "The Marriage of Figaro." In 1805, Lorenzo Da Ponte was the proprietor of a small grocery store in New York. But since his birth into an Italian Jewish family in 1749, he had already been a priest, a poet, the lover of many women, a scandalous Enlightenment thinker banned from teaching in Venice, the librettist for three of Mozart's most sublime operas, a collaborator with Salieri, a friend of Casanova, and a favorite of Emperor Joseph II. He would go on to establish New York City's first opera house and be the first professor of Italian at Columbia University. An inspired innovator but a hopeles...