Da Ponte, Lorenzo (lōrĕnt`sō dä pôn`tā), 1749–1838, Italian librettist and teacher, b. Ceneda as Emmanuele Conegliano. Born Jewish, he converted to Catholicism at 14, became (1773) a priest, and shortly after ordination moved to Venice. A freethinking liberal and sometime libertine and gambler, he was banished from Venice in 1779 due to several scandals. He lived briefly in Dresden, then settled (1781) in Vienna, where Emperor Joseph II named him (1783) poet of the imperial theaters, a post he held until 1790. During his tenure Da Ponte wrote the librettos for numerous operas. The most notable of these were for three Mozart masterpieces—The Marriage of Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787), and Così fan tutte (1790)—for which he contributed elegant, witty, and eminently singable words and created or adapted powerful plots and characters. Driven from Vienna after the emperor's death, Da Ponte wandered through Europe, married in Trieste, and settled (1792) in London. There he worked as a tutor of Italian, a bookseller, and a librettist to an Italian opera company until he went bankrupt in 1804.

A year later Da Ponte immigrated to America, where he failed in attempts to be a grocer, at selling medicines and drygoods, and at running a distillery. After a chance meeting with Clement Clarke Moore Moore, Clement Clarke, 1779–1863, American educator and poet, b. New York City, grad. Columbia, 1798. A biblical scholar, he was professor of Asian and Greek literature at the Episcopal General Theological Seminary, erected in New York City on land that he had
..... Click the link for more information. , however, he soon began a more successful career, spending most of the rest of his life in New York City as a celebrated teacher of Italian. A pioneer in the dissemination of Italian culture in the United States, he taught (1805–25) nearly 2,000 private pupils and in 1830 was appointed Columbia College's first professor of Italian language and literature (and the first such professor in the United States). His library, bought by Columbia in 1825, was the nucleus of its collection of Italian poetry and miscellaneous literature. In 1833 he helped establish the Italian Opera House in lower Manhattan, the first attempt to create a permanent American home for Italian opera. Da Ponte's last years were marred by poverty and the failure (1836) of the opera house.

Bibliography

See his memoirs (1823–27; tr. 1929; ed. by A. Livingston, tr. 1955, repr. 2000) detailing his extraordinary life; biographies by J. L. Russo (1922, repr. 1966), A. Fitzlyon (1955, repr. 1982), L. J. Hetenyi (1988), S. Hodges (1985, repr. 2002), R. Bolt (2006), and A. Holden (2006); A. Steptoe, The Mozart–Da Ponte Operas (1988); M. Du Mont, The Mozart-Da Ponte Operas: An Annotated Bibliography (2000).

Da Ponte, Lorenzo

orig. Emanuele Conegliano

(born March 10, 1749, Céneda, near Treviso, Veneto—died Aug. 17, 1838, New York, N.Y., U.S.) Italian poet and librettist. When his Jewish father converted to marry a Roman Catholic, he adopted the name of the local bishop. He took priestly orders in 1768, while teaching literature and publishing poetry. At odds with the authorities for his progressive views, he was expelled from the Venetian republic in 1779 for adultery. In 1783 he was appointed court poet for Vienna's Italian theatre. There he wrote a remarkable series of more than 40 opera librettos, including the masterpieces The Marriage of Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787), and Così fan tutte (1790) for Wolfgang A. Mozart. Court intrigue forced him to leave Vienna in 1791. He settled in New York in 1805, taught at Columbia College, wrote his colourful memoirs, and helped establish Italian opera in the city.