Join us for our latest lecture in our "A Note on Opera" series.
Few opera librettists would be remembered in their own right were it not for their association with opera; i.e. no one speaks of “Piave’s ‘La traviata,’” but rather “Verdi’s ‘La traviata’.” One striking exception, however, is Mozart’s librettist for “Le nozze di Figaro,” “Don Giovanni,” and “Così fan tutte”: Lorenzo da Ponte. Da Ponte, reared a Jew in Venice but later a convert to Roman Catholicism, became a priest, pursued as libertine a life as his boon companion Casanova, wrote plays for the Habsburg court in Vienna, and later emigrated to the United States, where he founded both Columbia University’s Italian Department and the first opera company in New York City. What a life!
His first collaboration with Mozart was “Le nozze di Figaro,” itself an adaptation of French playwright Pierre de Beaumarchais’s incendiary “Le Mariage de Figaro.” Voltaire described Beaumarchais’s play as “the first bomb hurled at the ancien régime.” Though da Ponte toned down the politics, the implied social criticism is still intense. “Figaro’s” impact has never waned and it is the oldest opera never to have left the standard repertoire.
Course to be taught in English by David Kerr. No pre-existing knowledge of music required.
Admission:
Goethe-Zentrum Atlanta Members: $10
Non-Members: $20
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