Lorenzo Da Ponte

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A foreword to Lorenzo Da Ponte: The Life and Times of Mozart's Librettist

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SOURCE: A foreword to Lorenzo Da Ponte: The Life and Times of Mozart's Librettist by Sheila Hodges, Universe Books, 1985, pp. ix-x.

[In the excerpt below, Robbins Landon focuses upon the collaboration between Mozart and Da Ponte, noting that the story of the latter's extraordinary career arguably has more basis in fact than has been hitherto believed.]

The collaboration between Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Lorenzo Da Ponte has often, and rightly, been compared to that between Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal; but whereas the latter collaboration is admirably documented, about the former we have only the tangible results in three of the greatest operas of all time—Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte. But apart from this substantial and lamentable lacuna, we know quite a lot about the extraordinary Da Ponte, not least because of his fascinating memoirs, which he wrote in America when an old man. Many have seriously questioned the overall veracity of those memoirs: Da Ponte, it is asserted, has stretched the truth, tried to put himself in the best possible light, and so on. Recent research has, however, tended to show that Da Ponte was much more truthful than has been believed, and to illustrate the point, I would like to take the case of Le nozze di Figaro. Da Ponte describes the beginnings as follows:

I set to work . . ., and as fast as I wrote the words, Mozart set them to music. In six weeks everything was in order. . . .

Naturally, it was seriously doubted that Mozart could have composed that very long opera—the printed score in the great new collection edition comprises 592 pages—in anything like six weeks. But the editor of that magnificent new edition, Ludwig Finscher, considers that, from information in Mozart's own letters and other authentic data (such as Mozart's own thematic catalogue, which contains many invaluable dates), it is likely that Mozart did indeed compose the 'short score' (i.e., without the instrumentation) within six weeks. The evidence of autograph manuscript—part of which belongs to the treasure trove recently rediscovered in Poland where it had been placed (in the Monastery of Grüssau, Silesia) for safekeeping by the German authorities in World War II—also confirms this almost incredible burst of enthusiasm and sheer hard work on Mozart's part (which resulted in headaches and stomach cramps, sure symptoms of nervous stress; see his letter of 14 January 1786).

We stress this rather pedantic affirmation of a small statement in Da Ponte's Memoirs simply to show that such a statement, even though unlikely when first considered, can be, and in this case has been, proved to be entirely accurate.

Da Ponte himself led a very unlikely life, moving from one country to another, often in circumstances less than pleasant, and ending his life as a respected and highly respectable Professor of Italian at Columbia University in New York. His life is fascinating, and it was high time that we had a new evaluation of this unbelievable man, whose achievements are considerable even apart from his connection with music's greatest genius. Da Ponte was a man of great subtlety and complexity. In Figaro, wrote the perceptive Hofmannsthal, there is "little to make one laugh and much to smile at': yes, indeed, and this wonderfully delicate pastel-like shade of colour is as much the merit of the libretto as the gift of the music that gave it life—a very settecento collaboration and result.

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