An observer at the scene would never have guessed that here stood one of the greatest librettists in the history of music, but sure enough, it was Lorenzo Da Ponte, a name that would be forever yoked to the beloved operas that his graceful, witty and songlike poetry enabled Mozart to create: "Le Nozze di Figaro," "Don Giovanni" and "Così Fan Tutte."
Da Ponte never tired of dropping Mozart's name, but his time in Vienna as the poet of the Italian opera, appointed by Emperor Joseph II, was in truth only one exciting episode in a long and fantastically colorful life. After leaving Vienna in 1791 and wending his way through Europe for more than a decade, seemingly always on the run from creditors and plagued by financial woes, Da Ponte joined his unofficial wife and children in this country. He lived out his final three decades here as a tireless emissary of Italian culture, a poet of the European Enlightenment magisterially adrift in a young, rough-and-tumble America. He died in New York in 1838 at 89.
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