Lorenzo Da Ponte

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

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SOURCE: An introduction and "Lorenzo Da Ponte," in Lorenzo Da Ponte: The Life and Times of Mozart's Librettist, Universe Books, 1985, pp. xi-xiv, 1-223.

[Hodges is the author of a full-length, affirming biography of Da Ponte. In the following excerpt from that work, she favorably appraises Da Ponte's significance as a writer of libretti.]

If, a century and a half after his death, Lorenzo Da Ponte could return to earth, it is likely that he would have mixed feelings about his twentieth-century image. First and foremost, though he would be astonished that the operas of Salieri, Martin y Soler and Winter, so famous in their day, are now virtually forgotten, and the libretti which he wrote for them buried in the same grave of neglect, he would be immeasurably happy that, through his collaboration with Mozart, he has won the recognition for which he longed, and which he never found during his lifetime. In his memoirs and elsewhere he had much to say about the importance of the libretto in the success or otherwise of an opera, and he bitterly resented the low esteem in which the skilled librettist, as he knew himself to be, was held. So he would rejoice that today, wherever Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte are performed, the name of Lorenzo Da Ponte is indissolubly linked with that of the genius whom he used to call 'the divine Mozzart'.

Nevertheless, it would grieve him that so little is remembered of his immense contribution to American culture during the thirty-three years which he spent in that country—through his dedicated teaching of Italian literature, through the many thousands of Italian books which he imported from Europe, and through his three valiant battles to establish Italian opera in the new world. All were of great and lasting importance in revealing to Americans the glorious literary and musical heritage of Italy, but, though during his lifetime they brought him the respect of a small yet important section of New York society, they have not given him the immortality which he felt to be his due.

Thirdly—and this would have produced thousands of words from his fluent and indignant pen—he would have been enraged at the comparison which is so often made between his life and memoirs and those of Casanova, with the scales of approval generally coming down on the side of the latter. Da Ponte has suffered much from posterity's view of him as a disreputable libertine, with a string of abandoned lady-loves in every town. In fact, apart from a short and extremely colourful period in Venice when he was still a young man, and again at the end of his Vienna period, his life was not that of an adventurer, if the word is taken to mean one who seeks adventures. By temperament and gifts a teacher whose great love for poetry, as he says, 'led him on a sudden to the dramatic field', through certain facets of his character—gullibility, vanity, the desire to be liked, a genuine wish to do everyone he met a good turn and (not least) his propensity to fall in love—for almost the whole of his eighty-nine years he was at the mercy of fate rather than in control of it, often tossed helplessly from adversity to adversity.

His life, like his nature, was full of contrasts and paradoxes, and this can be said too of the view which those who knew him or have written about him have formed of this elusive, gifted, fascinating man. Fausto Nicolini, joint editor of the standard Italian edition of the memoirs, described them as 'a jungle of lies, an apologia, coarse, badly strung together, unctuous, hypocritical, sentimental moralising', and, prejudiced and ill-judged though this comment is, nevertheless it reflects the opinion, less immoderately expressed, of other commentators. It is true that the accuracy of the memoirs cannot always be relied upon; like countless memoirists, Da Ponte prided himself overmuch on his excellent powers of recall, and with his lively mind, his black-and-white judgements of those who were for and those who were against him, and his skill in writing vivid dialogue, reconstructed from memory conversations which had, he claimed, taken place many years before. This is probably also true of some of the letters which he quotes verbatim, and which—if they ever existed—he would almost certainly have lost as he fled from the arms of the law or angry creditors. Later in life he wrote that he kept a scrapbook of notable things, but it is unlikely that he was able to carry many records from the past when he escaped to America. Equally, he is silent or untrustworthy about certain incidents which show him in a bad light. But the same accusation could be levelled at many other writers before and since—Rousseau, Cellini, Goldoni, Michael Kelly and Casanova amongst them—who are not scolded for their deviation from the exact truth. Often, when he is accused of inventing or exaggerating, careful examination of the documents shows that there is a solider basis for his narrative than he has been given credit for, and that, in the main, where it is possible to verify his statements the memoirs reflect the truth.

Karen Blixen wrote of the Africans whom she loved so dearly, 'They were never reliable, but in a grand manner sincere'; and though the word 'never' is much too harsh to apply to Da Ponte's memoirs, to some extent this is a just comment on their author. He was not a cheat or a liar, and was hurt, bewildered and outraged when he came across people who were, and who took advantage of his credulity. Testimonials from his contemporaries and from later writers bear witness to his sincerity, warmth of heart, generosity, and charity to those less fortunate than he was, even when his own fortunes were at a low ebb.

Nor, in general, are his courage and resilience sufficiently recognised. His long life took him successively to Venice in her last glittering years as a republic; to Vienna under the Emperor Joseph II, a brilliant centre of European culture to which many creative artists gravitated, and where the fight for imperial patronage was cut-throat and merciless; to the London of George III, bustling, elegant, yet in mortal terror of invasion by Napoleon; and finally to the new world, a land of scattered pioneers with little time as yet for the finer influences of European civilisation. In all four countries, each of them offering such a contrast to the others, he arrived a penniless fugitive, and everywhere, with optimism and enthusiasm, he built up a new life. Only in extreme old age, when the fame for which he longed began to seem unattainable, did despondence conquer—and even then never for long. Though the memoirs and his letters sometimes reflect a mood of defeat, his inextinguishable joy in life soon broke through; and the descriptions of his later years which have come down to us reflect a man who carried his immense vitality and exuberance to the end of his days.

Everywhere Da Ponte went he left traces of himself, above all in the state archives of Venice and Vienna and in the university libraries of the United States. Much of this material has appeared only in specialist journals in Italy and Austria; much has never been translated into English; and a considerable amount—especially some of his American letters—has never been printed at all. Many of his libretti, too, are unfamiliar to those who have written about him. All this new material gives a very different picture from the one which is normally painted, showing Da Ponte as a man of erudition and talent, who produced some of the most skilful libretti that have ever been written, and who in his late years gained the respect and admiration of his contemporaries.

His memoirs, published between 1823 and 1830, provide the basis for any biography of Da Ponte; in addition, he wrote two short autobiographical forerunners, both published in America: Storia compendiosa della vita di Lorenzo Da Ponte, published in 1807 shortly after he reached New York, and An Extract front the Life of Lorenzo Da Ponte, which came out in 1819. Both are valuable sources of information. . . .

His libretti can be divided into four categories: translations, of which there are very few, and which are faithfully made; adaptations from 'straight' plays, especially those of Goldoni; adaptations from existing opera libretti; and original texts, which again constitute only a small part of his work. So by far the largest part of his output falls into the second and third classes, the adaptations. But nowhere does he slavishly copy, and often there is virtually no textual resemblance between the model and his libretto. His particular genius lies in his vast knowledge of classical and contemporary literature to which to go for his sources, his sense of stagecraft, his skill in turning prose into 'singable' verse, and his understanding of the relationship between words and music and of the music of words.

Da Ponte himself had strong views on this question of recourse to the work of earlier writers. In 1819 he wrote, 'If a writer of a theatrical piece does not deserve to be praised, or even noticed, when the subject of his composition is known, what praise is due to Shakespeare for all the pieces taken by him from Boccaccio, and Bandello's novels; what praise to Voltaire for his Merope; to Alfieri for his Antigone; to Metastasio for his Semiramide; to Monti for his Aristodemo, and to all those poets who, in common with them, not only wrote tragedies and dramas on well known subjects, but wrote them after having seen the performances of pieces on the same subjects?'

Also of crucial importance—and this is another reason why he is one of the greatest librettists who have ever lived—was his versatility. Opera at this time was sharply divided between opera seria, the older form, and opera buffa, which had developed as a reaction against opera seria. The composers and poets who worked within the earlier genre chose classical and mythological subjects, almost always with a Greek or Roman theme; emotions were formalised, ensembles were rare, and arias and recitativo secco (accompanied only by harpsichord or piano) predominated. Opera buffa, on the other hand, developed into a kind of social comedy, reflecting everyday life and characters whom the audience would recognise from their own experience. Aria and recitative were much more closely related, one leading naturally into the other, and the arias were more varied than was possible in opera seria. Da Ponte, with his quick wit, his ability to adapt to his ambience, the need to be liked which was always so strong a part of his nature, possessed a chameleon quality that enabled him to turn—as few other librettists were able to do—from the high tragedy and drama of opera seria, where gods and men lived within a close relationship and men were required to show themselves at their most heroic, to the domesticity of everyday life, and to plots concerned with intrigue, star-crossed lovers, stern fathers, jealous husbands and pretty chambermaids. . . .

Da Ponte was a complex man, full of contradictions, considerably larger than life, and perhaps influenced by his Jewish heritage to a far greater extent than he himself realised, or than he would have wished others to believe. Of himself he wrote, in his account of the Montresor venture:

I believe that my heart is made of a different stuff from that of other men. A noble act, generous, benevolent, blinds me. I am like a soldier who, spurred by the longing for glory, rushes against the mouth of the cannon; like an ardent lover who flings himself into the arms of a woman who torments him. The hope of giving, post funera, immortality to my name, and of leaving to a nation which I revere a memory of me which will not be ignoble; the sweet allurement of arousing feelings of gratitude and goodwill in those who follow an art that was not disgraced by my pen; the desire to awaken love for the beautiful language which I brought to America, and love too for our ravishing music; the longing to see once again on the American stage some of the children of my youthful inspiration, which are still remembered in the theatres of the Thames, the Danube and the Elbe; and, finally, a sweet presentiment of joy, encouragement and honour, based on the integrity of my actions, the reliability of my promises and the happy success of a well-organised spectacle, were the powerful spurs which goaded me to this delightful undertaking, and from which nothing, so far, has succeeded in deterring me. I dreamt of roses and laurels; but from the roses I had only thorns, and from the laurels bitterness! So goes the world!

But in the end Da Ponte, librettist and teacher of genius, dedicated scholar, eloquent champion of his mother country, has found the immortality for which he craved; for as long as the operas of Mozart are performed Da Ponte, too, will be honoured.

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