Lorenzo Da Ponte - Vienna and London

Vienna and London

Lorenzo Da Ponte moved to Gorizia, then part of Austria, where he lived as a writer, attaching himself to the leading noblemen and cultural patrons of the city. In 1781 he believed (falsely) that he had an invitation from his friend Caterino Mazzolà, the poet of the Saxon court, to take up a post at Dresden, only to be disabused when he arrived there. Mazzolà however offered him work at the theatre translating libretti and recommended that he seek to develop writing skills. He also gave him a letter of introduction to the composer Antonio Salieri.

With the help of Salieri, Da Ponte applied for and obtained the post of librettist to the Italian Theatre in Vienna. Here he also found a patron in Mozart's benefactor, the banker Raimund Wetzlar von Plankenstern. As court librettist in Vienna, he collaborated with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Antonio Salieri, and Vicente Martín y Soler. Early successes were Le nozze di Figaro and Soler's Una cosa rara. Da Ponte wrote the libretti for Mozart's most popular Italian operas, Le nozze di Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787), and Così fan tutte (1790). All of Da Ponte's works were adaptations of pre-existing plots, as was common among librettists of the time, with the exceptions of L'arbore di Diana with Soler, and Così fan tutte, which he began with Salieri, but completed with Mozart. However the quality of his elaboration gave them new life.

In the case of Figaro, Da Ponte included a preface to the libretto which hints at his technique and objectives in libretto writing, as well as his close working with the composer:

I have not made a translation, but rather an imitation, or let us say an extract I was compelled to reduce the sixteen original characters to eleven, two of which can be played by a single actor and to omit, in addition to one whole act, many effective scenes In spite, however, of all the zeal and care on the part of both the composer and myself to be brief, the opera will not be one of the shortest Our excuse will be the variety of development of this drama, to paint faithfully and in in full colour the divers passions that are aroused, and to offer a new type of spectacle

Only one address of Da Ponte's during his stay in Vienna is known: in 1788 he lived in the house Heidenschuß 316 (today the street area between Freyung and Hof), which belonged to the Viennese archbishop. There he rented a three-room-apartment for 200 Gulden.

With the death of Austrian Emperor Joseph II in 1792, Da Ponte lost his patron – he had already been formally dimissed from the Imperial Service in 1791, due to intrigues. He received no support from the new Emperor, Leopold. He could not return to Venice, from which he had been banished until the end of 1794. In 1792 Da Ponte travelled via Prague to London, accompanied by his companion Nancy Grahl (with whom he eventually had four children); in 1803 he became librettist at the King's Theatre, London. He remained based in London undertaking various theatrical and publishing activities until 1805, when debt and bankruptcy caused him to flee to the United States in 1805 with Grahl and his children.