"L. de Ponty's Wagon"

THE LIBERTINE LIBRETTIST (292 pp.)—April FitzLyon — Abelard-Schuman ($3.75).

At 36, Lorenzo da Ponte was not only a fop but a flop. As Poet to the Imperial Theaters in Vienna, it was his duty to write librettos for "great composers," but Da Ponte had muffed the job. In 1785 he decided to collaborate with "an almost unknown, second-rate composer" named Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Joseph II was shocked by such folly, but eventually, the amiable Emperor gave his approval. The new opera was Le Nozze di Figaro. So began the greatest collaboration in operatic history. To this day, says British Biographer April FitzLyon, nobody quite knows why "the facile, mediocre poet, the very inexperienced dramatist, should be the man who, above all others, succeeded in providing Mozart with the perfect framework for his music." One possible explanation is that a better poet than Da Ponte might have been less willing to bow to Mozart's stern dictum: "In an opera the poetry must be altogether the obedient daughter of the music." It is the usual fate of the librettist to be forgotten in favor of the composer, but Da Ponte deserves to be remembered—not only because of his skillful service to Mozart, but because of the outrageous and fascinating life he led.

Priest to Poet. He was born (1749) in the Venetian town of Ceneda (now Vittorio Veneto). His parents were Jews; his original name was Emanuele Conegliano. But his father changed the family faith, and Emanuele took the names of his baptizer. Bishop Lorenzo da Ponte. Aided by the bishop. Da Ponte became a Roman Catholic deacon.

"Handsome, intelligent, ardent." Da Ponte was also totally irreligious, unscrupulous and dishonest. Of the three Venetian rules—"A little Mass in the morning, a little gamble in the afternoon, and a little lady in the evening"—he paid lip service to the first, indulged rarely in the second, concentrated wholeheartedly on the third. While priest of San Luca in Venice, he took as his mistress Angioletta Bellaudi, a married woman who had been little better than a prostitute since the age of ten. Their first child barely missed being born on a sidewalk, with Father da Ponte probably acting as midwife ("The kind of incident that happens every day," he said). Ignoring a reprimand by the vicar-general, Da Ponte and Angioletta next opened a brothel—Da Ponte, "still in his cassock, played the violin."

When the Foundling Hospital found itself saddled with three children of the union, the authorities lost patience. Charged with "public concubinage and rapto di donna onesta" (abduction of a respectable woman), Da Ponte was sentenced to 15 years' banishment from Venice.

He arrived in Austria with nothing except "a little vocabulary" of amorous German words which he had picked up in the arms of an innkeeper's wife at the border. Da Ponte boldly demanded the post of Poet to the Theaters. Asked by the Emperor how many plays he had written, Da Ponte for once gave an honest reply: "None, Sire." The Emperor was impressed. "Good, good! Then we shall have a virgin muse," he said.