Memoirs of Lorenzo Da Ponte (New York Review Books Classics)

Description

"Plot and counterplot lie at the heart of Don Giovanni, Cosi fan tutte, and The Marriage of Figaro, the three libretti that Lorenzo Da Ponte prepared for Mozart. They were also central to Da Ponte's own extraordinary life. His Memoirs record a fantastic variety of romantic, political, and professional intrigues, and tell of meetings with a host of remarkable men. In a life that took him from the canals of Venice to the streets of New York, Da Ponte was at different times priest, professional gambler, proprietor of a bordello, political agitator, court poet, impresario, grocery-store owner, and the first professor of Italian literature at Columbia University. His Memoirs, a minor classic of Italian literature, are the picaresque and engrossing story of a man of enormous talent and unsurpassed flair who was, above all, an indefatigable survivor."--BOOK JACKET.

First Sentence

SINCE I AM not writing the memoirs of a man illustrious by birth, by talents, by rank, wherein the slightest things are wont to be judged of greatest consequence because of the importance of the subject of which they treat, I shall speak but little of my family, my neighborhood, my early years, as of matters trivial enough in themselves or of scant moment to the reader.

Subjects