Librettist Lorenzo da Ponte

Mozart Contemporaries / Librettists

Lorenzo Da Ponte, Italian Librettist of Wolfgang Mozart

Lorenzo Da Ponte's life and times, Italian librettist who wrote three of Mozart's four best operas.

Lorenzo Da Ponte (10 March 1749 – 17 August 1838), born in Céneda, near Treviso, Veneto, Italy, is an important librettist of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He was a Venetian opera librettist and poet. He wrote the librettos for 28 operas by 11 composers, including three of Mozart's greatest operas, Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro and Così fan tutte.  He was married to Nancy Grahl in Trieste, Italy, had one son.

Librettists of Wolfgang A. Mozart

Librettists of Mozart include Lorenzo Da Ponte and Emanuel Schikaneder

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, having composerd more than 20 operas in his short years of life, had several librettists. A librettist is a writer of a libretto, an Italian word meaning “little book.” In musical parlance, it is the text used for opera, operetta, oratorio, and other musical genres.

The term libretto is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as Mass, requiem, and sacred cantata. Libretto (pl. libretti), from Italian, is the diminutive of the word libro (book).  The difference between the libretto and a synopsis:  the libretto contains all the words and stage directions, while a synopsis summarizes the plot.

The relationship of the librettist (that is, the writer of a libretto) to the composer in the creation of a musical work has varied over the centuries, as have the sources and the writing techniques employed.  In the context of a modern English-language musical theater piece, the libretto is often referred to as the book of the work.

 

Lorenzo Da Ponte, Librettist of Wolfgang A. Mozart

Lorenzo Da Ponte, Mozart's librettist of some of the composer's greatest operas

Guest Writer:  (c) Agnes Selby
 
On 20th August 1838, while the trees in the Roman Catholic cemetery swayed gently in the breeze, a distinguished group of New York citizens gathered around an open grave bidding farewell to the scholarly old gentleman who had died peacefully in his ninetieth year. He had been the first Professor of Italian Literature at Columbia University and had endowed Columbia's library with a large collection of rare Italian books.

Exceedingly handsome even in his old age, he had looked patriarchal with a mane of glistening white hair and piercing eyes. He had been a popular citizen of New York, his children had married into the best American families, and his wife, who had died before him, was remembered as a gentle, ladylike creature of exquisite beauty.

The distinguished citizens did not mourn the old man too deeply. He had died of old age and had lived a long and fruitful life. Some even smiled to themselves as they remembered his little lies, boasting of writing librettos for the immortal Mozart, counting the Emperor Joseph II of the Holy Roman Empire amongst his friends and knowing Casanova intimately. Oh, he could tell some stories... and added to his little fibs was the gossip that he had once been a practicing priest. This gossip, they believed, was spread by his Italian enemies. On top of all that, the gossips said he had been born a Jew.