Mozart S Da Ponte Operas

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."

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.

First Published in 1993. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

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.

John Wells introduces the opera with a high-spirited account of the action-packed career of the author, in many respects the prototype of Figaro himself. Basil Deane explores the score: he shows that Mozart's characters are illuminated here not so much in soliloquies but in their reactions to each other. Composer Stephen Oliver discusses how the comedy exists not just in the words but, essentially, in the music. The full Italian text is given, with a note on the order of scenes in Act Three and the alternative passages Mozart wrote for the 1789 revival. The classic translation of E.J. Dent is an excellent way to get to know the twists and turns of the plot and the stylish wit of da Ponte's innuendos.Contents: A Society Marriage, John Wells; A Musical Commentary, Basil Deane; Music and Comedy in 'The Marriage of Figaro, Stephen Oliver; Beaumarchais's Characters; Le nozze di Figaro: Libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte; The Marriage of Figaro: English version by Edward J. Dent

A comprehensive guide to Mozart's DON GIOVANNI, featuring insightful and in depth Commentary and Analysis, a complete, newly translated Libretto with Italian/English side-by side, and over 30 music highlight examples.