This book charts the musical, cultural, and social contexts of Mozart's collaborations with the librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte, illuminating these great masterpieces along with Mozart's creative process and the functions of 18th-century opera.
The partnership of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte, composer and librettist respectively for The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni and Cosi fan tutte, was one of the most extraordinary collaborations in the history of opera. The book features biographic profiles of composer and librettist - Mozart: Master of Musical Characterization, and Da Ponte: Ambassador of Italian Culture plus a complete portrait of each opera, featuring, Principal Characters, Brief Story Synopsis, Story Narrative with Music Highlight Examples and complete Libretto, with Italian and English translations side-by-side."
The partnership of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte, composer and librettist respectively for The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte, was one of the most extraordinary collaborations in the history of opera. The book features biographic profiles of composer and librettist - Mozart: Master of Musical Characterization, and Da Ponte: Ambassador of Italian Culture plus a complete portrait of each opera, featuring, Principal Characters, Brief Story Synopsis, Story Narrative with Music Highlight Examples and complete Libretto, with Italian and English translations side-by-side.
Three of the greatest operas ever written—The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così 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.
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 hopeless businessman, who loved with wholehearted loyalty and recklessness, Da Ponte was one of the early immigrants to live out the American dream. In Rodney Bolt's rollicking and extensively researched biography, Da Ponte's picaresque life takes readers from Old World courts and the back streets of Venice, Vienna, and London to the New World promise of New York City. Two hundred and fifty years after Mozart's birth, the life and legacy of his librettist Da Ponte are as astonishing as ever.
This reference guide provides access to almost 1,000 books, book chapters, articles, and dissertations about the three Mozart-Da Ponte operas, Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Cosi fan tutte. Mozart and Da Ponte collaborated on these operas between 1786 and 1791. The literature detailed in this volume includes material published from Mozart's death to the present. Following an introduction to the operas, the bibliography section lists the literature by works in general and by each of the three operas. A discography groups entries by opera and original recording date. This guide will appeal to music and opera scholars. As an essential research tool, sections are cross-referenced throughout. Separate author, title, and subject indexes complete the volume.