Lorenzo Da Ponte : the life and times of Mozart's librettist / Sheila Hodges ; foreword by H.C. Robbins Landon.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hodges, Sheila.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Da Ponte, Lorenzo, 1749-1838.

Da Ponte, Lorenzo.

Librettists--Biography.

Librettists.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xiv, 274 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Madison : University of Wisconsin Press, [2002]

Summary:

Three of the greatest operas ever written--The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Cosi fan tutte--join the exquisite music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart with the perfectly matched libretti of Lorenzo Da Ponte. Da Ponte's own long life (1749-1838), however, was more fantastic than any opera plot. A poor Jew who became a Catholic priest; a priest who became a young gambler and rake; a teacher, poet, and librettist of genius who became a Pennsylvania greengrocer; an impoverished immigrant to America who became professor of Italian at Columbia University--wherever Da Ponte went, he arrived a penniless fugitive and made a new and eventful life. Sheila Hodges follows him from the last glittering years of the Venetian Republic to the Vienna of Mozart and Salieri, and from George III's London to New York City.

Contents:

Lorenzo Da Ponte 1

Chronological Table of the Main Events of Da Ponte's Life 224

Da Ponte's Works 226.

Notes:

Originally published: London : Grafton Books, 1985.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 258-265) and index.

ISBN:

0299178749

OCLC:

48857893