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Lorenzo
Da Ponte
The
Life and Times of Mozart's Librettist
Sheila
Hodges
FOREWORD
BY H. C. ROBBINS LANDON
"Hodges . . . shows us a lover
of language, a scholar, contradictory, big-hearted, as swift
and many-sided as his libretti."—Publishers
Weekly
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.
"Anyone
with literary, biographical, musical, or historical interests
will delight in this well-written and vivid portrayal of a multifaceted
man."—John Greenhalgh, Classical Music
"Hodges,
with the aid of much archival research . . . shows us a lover
of language, a scholar, contradictory, big-hearted, as swift
and many-sided as his libretti."—Publishers Weekly
Sheila Hodges is a writer living in London and author
of eight books, as well as articles published in Opera Quarterly,
Music Review, and other journals. She was formerly in charge
of the editorial department at the publishing house of Victor
Gollancz, where she edited all of Daphne du Maurier's books in
the last forty years of the author's life.
For more information regarding publicity
and reviews contact our publicity manager, Chris Caldwell, phone: (608) 263-0734,
email: publicity@uwpress.wisc.edu
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April
2002
288 pp. 6 x 9
18 b/w photos
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