Lorenzo DaPonte
by Marc A. Scorca
Lorenzo DaPonte was an Italian adventurer whose life spanned almost a century. His small measure of enduring fame is due more to the results of his eight-year association with Mozart than to any accomplishment for which he could claim full credit, yet DaPonte's career as a librettist was only one episode in his complicated life.
Lorenzo DaPonte was plagued throughout his life by personal scandal which prevented domestic stability. Moving frequently from city to city, usually at the request of local authorities, DaPonte was forced, for his survival, to adopt whatever occupation was available to him. Dependent on his poetic talent, good looks and personal charm, DaPonte was quick to take advantage of opportunities which assured his continued comfort. Luck accounts for his appointment as Imperial Poet in Vienna and his introduction to Mozart. Although the selection of DaPonte as librettist for The Marriage of Figaro was a brilliant one, it was due to Mozart's initiative that DaPonte was afforded the opportunity to work on three of the masterpieces of the operatic literature, The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Cosî fan tutte.
From earliest life, DaPonte was affected by circumstances beyond his control. Lorenzo DaPonte, né Emanuele Conegliano, was born on March 10, 1749 (Mozart was born in 1756) in the Jewish ghetto of Ceneda, part of the republic of Venice. His father, Geremia Conegliano, was a leather dealer. His mother, Rachel Pincerle, died in 1754, leaving three children. In 1763, Geremia arranged a second marriage to a Roman Catholic girl, Orsola Pasqua Paietta: He was 41; she was 17. Conversion of the entire family from Judaism to Roman Catholicism was a prerequisite to this marriage. Accordingly, on August 29, 1763, twelve days before the wedding, Geremia and his children were baptized in a ceremony celebrated by the Bishop of Ceneda, Lorenzo DaPonte. Following the custom of the day, the converted family adopted the last name of their celebrant. When he was 14 years old, Emanuele Conegliano gained a new name, Lorenzo DaPonte, and a new identity, which he kept until the end of his long life.
Lorenzo's education was neglected. Although a tutor had been engaged for him at his eleventh birthday, the teacher's brutality and inefficiency resulted in rapid dismissal. For another three years, Lorenzo went without formal education, relying on books found in his home. The great Italian poet and librettist Metastasio became his idol. Lorenzo's educational neglect was remedied at the time of his conversion when Bishop DaPonte, recognizing his namesake's superior intelligence, arranged for his entrance into the seminary of Ceneda.
It was his patron's desire that Lorenzo become a priest. Although Lorenzo's personality was entirely unsuited to the priesthood, his dependence on the beneficence of the Bishop prevented contradiction. Accordingly, Lorenzo began an intensive study of Latin, in which he admits in his memoir, he was able to write "with some degree of elegance" after only two years. While at the seminary, DaPonte developed a life-long devotion to the work of Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto and Tasso.
After further studies in philosophy and mathematics, Lorenzo was admitted to the priesthood in 1769. In his memoire, DaPonte remembers the circumstances surrounding his ordination:
The state of poverty into which my family was plunged made me renounce the hand of a noble and pretty girl whom I loved tenderly, and made me embrace a calling totally opposed to my temperament, my character, my principles and my studies, thus opening the door to a thousand strange happenings and dangers which the envy, hypocrisy and malice of my enemies took advantage of for more than twenty years.
DaPonte was soon appointed to the faculty of the seminary in Portogruaro, a post he held for only a short time. In 1771, while convalescing from malaria, DaPonte visited Venice, where the sensuous atmosphere exercised its magic over the young priest. So did a few women!
Before long, DaPonte claimed he was the victim of antagonism from other teachers at the seminary who were jealous of his good fortune and superior talent. At the vulnerable age of twenty-four, he left the seminary and moved to Venice, where he fell in love with a woman of dubious repute, Angela Tiepolo. With her brother, Angela introduced Lorenzo to gambling, a game to which he became enslaved, with all the expected embarrassments.
Another teaching post in Treviso ended abruptly when DaPonte was put on trial in Venice and declared unfit for teaching in the entire republic of Venice, a result of the publication of a series of supposedly subversive poems. After a series of affairs with women both married and unmarried, DaPonte accepted a job as secretary to one Pietro Antonio Zaguri, a senator and patron of the arts through whom Lorenzo met the legendary Casanova.
DaPonte's most notorious affair was with Angioletta Ballaudi, a married woman, with whom Lorenzo had three illegitimate children. In the book The Libertine Librettist , April Fitzlyon writes:
It was a life of continuous dissipation, of perpetual moves from one lodging to another, of poverty, squalor, and brawls. Although DaPonte and Angioletta remained together, they were by no means faithful to each other, and Angioletta in particular made herself very unpopular with other women because of her love affairs.... The couple became so notorious that Angioletta was nicknamed 'the priest's tart' --- although DaPonte naively assured everyone that she was his sister. Altogether, three of their children were deposited at the Foundling Hospital.
The officials of Venice instituted a trial against DaPonte for adultery and public concubinage. The trial was conducted from June through August 1779. Sensing the potential danger, DaPonte left Venice and was safely in Austria when the order for his arrest was delivered on September 13, 1779. His sentence was published in December, 1779. DaPonte was banished from Venice for fifteen years. If caught on Venetian territory within that time, he would be sentenced to seven years imprisonment in a dungeon without light.
At the age of only thirty-one, DaPonte arrived in Austria, speaking no German. He soon moved to Dresden, then to Vienna, in search of work. At each stop, he engaged in amorous affairs that challenge our contemporary, and rather conventional, imaginations.
When DaPonte arrived in Vienna, he had a letter of introduction to the composer Salieri. In Vienna's creative society, DaPonte was soon introduced to the idol of his youth, Metastasio, who praised the evidence of DaPonte's literary talent.
When, toward the end of 1782, DaPonte learned that the Emperor planned to open an Italian Theater, he used his extensive connections to secure the position of "Poet to the Italian Theater." Upon learning that his new poet had never written a play, the Emperor is reported to have remarked, "Never mind, we shall have a virgin muse." It was at a party of artists and their patrons that DaPonte first met Mozart.
DaPonte's first important commission was a collaboration with Salieri. Il ricco d'un giorno ( A Rich Man for a Day ), premiered in December of 1784. It was a failure that prompted Salieri to comment that he would first allow his fingers to be cut off before again writing music for a libretto by DaPonte. However, history took a different turn of events.
DaPonte's next libretto was written for the popular Spanish composer, Vincenzo Martin y Soler. Il Burbero premiered on January 4, 1786 and was a great success that restored DaPonte's reputation.
DaPonte had promised Mozart to write a libretto. Indeed, Mozart had not written an opera since 1782 ( The Abduction from the Seraglio ), largely out of frustration over the lack of a good libretto.
DaPonte took a great risk when he accepted the young composer's proposition concerning an operatic adaptation of Beaumarchais' controversial play, The Marriage of Figaro. The risk paid off. The British tenor and Figaro cast member, Michael Kelly, remembered in his autobiography:
Never had one beheld such a triumph. The theater was packed, and so many numbers had to be repeated that the time of the performance was nearly doubled. Indeed, after the opening night, the Emperor ordered that no numbers were to be repeated in subsequent performances.
Immediately following Figaro, DaPonte collaborated with Martin y Soler on another opera.. Una cosa rara premiered in the autumn of 1786. So successful was this opera, that it eclipsed Figaro as the most popular opera of the year, and the ladies of Viennese society began to dress like characters from the opera.
His fame at a peak as a result of three consecutive successes, DaPonte received many requests for libretti. Working quickly, he completed texts for the composers Storace, Righini, and Piticchio. All these were failures, prompting the Emperor to advise DaPonte to work only for composers of the first rank. Accordingly, DaPonte undertook three simultaneous projects: for Mozart, Don Giovanni; for Martin y Soler, L'arbore di Diana ; and for Salieri, Auxur .
In his memoirs, DaPonte recalled his method for maintaining his inspiration:
A bottle of Tokay at my right, the inkstand before me, and a box of Spanish snuff on my left, I sat at my table for twelve consecutive hours. My landlady's daughter, a pretty girl of sixteen (for whom I wish I could have felt only paternal affection) came to my room whenever I called for her, which was very often, especially when it seemed to me that I was losing my inspiration. Now and again she brought me a cake or a cup of coffee, and sometimes only her winsome little face, always gay and smiling, as if created to inspire poetical fancies and witty ideas.
The eight years DaPonte spent in Vienna as Poet at the Italian Theater (1782 to 1790) were the most stable, successful years of his life. Following the success of Don Giovanni, which was greeted with tremendous enthusiasm, DaPonte wrote a number of additional libretti, including two for Salieri and one for Mozart, Così fan tutte.
In 1790, however, problems began to develop. Due to the expenses of his war against the Turks, the Emperor withdrew his support of the opera. Although DaPonte managed to keep the opera open through the sale of subscriptions, the death of Emperor Joseph II on February 20, 1790 (less than one month after the premiere of Così), hastened the end of DaPonte's tenure in Vienna.
His departure was assured when reports of his continued romantic intrigue reached the Empress. DaPonte's latest affair was with the soprano called La Ferrarese, who created the role of Fiordiligi in Così . Due to the backstage politics, DaPonte was fired.
Without work, DaPonte approached Mozart, inquiring if the composer would accompany him to London. Busy with The Magic Flute, Mozart declined. DaPonte's situation grew desperate when he was told to leave Vienna on twenty-four hours notice. He had foolishly written an inflammatory poem against a high government official.
The poet took refuge in Trieste, then in Prague, where he sought the advice of his old friend, Casanova. Casanova supported the idea of moving to London, especially in light of the growing revolutionary furor. (Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette had recently been arrested.)
DaPonte took this advice, and with a new wife, arrived in London in 1792, where he secured the position of Poet at the Drury Lane Theater. There, he created two new libretti for his Spanish collaborator, Martin y Soler.
When the politics of London theater became too much even for DaPonte, he opened an Italian bookstore in London and by 1801 had established an extensive stock and clientele. Sadly, financial ruin resulted from foolish endorsements of a friend's debt. Judging that disaster was imminent, DaPonte sent his family to America. His wife and children sailed from London on September 20, 1804. Lorenzo joined his family six months later.
On the suggestion of his father-in-law, DaPonte opened a grocery store in Manhattan. Due to an epidemic of yellow fever in September of 1805, however, he moved the shop to Elizabethtown, New Jersey.
It is amazing to think that one of the most important librettists in the history of opera, and one of the characters who most clearly represents the excesses of 18th century Europe should wind up selling groceries in Elizabethtown, New Jersey.
DaPonte ran into typical trouble in the United States, although none of it romantic. His life as a grocer ended in bankruptcy. He wrote in his memoirs:
Sometimes deceived by feigned distress, sometimes by false promises, I sold my goods to those who were never prepared when their payments became due. I lent money, my credit, my effects, to persons who studied at night how they might overreach me in the day.... I was sometimes obliged, rather than lose all, to take for notes due long before, lame horses, broken carts, disjointed chairs, old shoes, rancid butter, watery cider, rotten eggs, apples, brooms, turnips, potatoes.
After the failure of his store, DaPonte returned to New York with his family and began teaching Italian privately. Another failed business venture with a distiller landed the DaPonte family in Sudbury, Pennsylvania, selling groceries again, but not for long: Finally, in 1825, through the efforts of his personal friend, Clement C. Moore, DaPonte was appointed professor of Italian at Columbia University. It was the same year that Don Giovanni was first performed in New York as part of an imported Italian opera season tour. DaPonte's reputation was greatly enhanced.
DaPonte's wife died in 1832, but he remained active. In his 90th year, he died suddenly. He was buried in a cemetery in lower Manhattan that was "moved" to Queens, New York, later in the century to make way for new construction. In the transference from Manhattan to Queens, the identity of DaPonte's grave was lost. He, like Mozart, rests in an unmarked grave, his contributions to the stage defining a golden era of opera.
