|
List Price: $19.95Amazon.com's Price: $15.96 You Save: $3.99 (20%)Prices subject to change.
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Buy Now!
This item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping.
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 782.1092
EAN: 9780940322356
ISBN: 0940322358
Label: NYRB Classics
Manufacturer: NYRB Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 472
Publication Date: May 31, 2000
Publisher: NYRB Classics
Release Date: May 31, 2000
Sales Rank: 713983
Studio: NYRB Classics
Related Items:
Editorial Review:
Product Description:
Plot and counterplot lie at the heart of Don Giovanni, Cos fan tutte, and The Marriage of Figaro, the three brilliant 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.
Amazon.com Review:
"It was as though Providence had willed that I should ever, all my life long, keep falling into the hands of knaves," writes Lorenzo da Ponte. Certainly, this remarkable narrative documents a life beset by a vicious world, but also one of insuppressible energy. Da Ponte is known for his librettos to three Mozart masterpieces: Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte. He wrote much else for the opera company of Emperor Joseph II in Vienna (until his enemies got him dismissed), going on to be a bookseller in London, a grocer in New York, a general-store owner in Pennsylvania, and, finally, a professor of Italian at Columbia University. His life, stretching from 1749 to 1838, practically defines the term "picaresque."
Don't expect a trustworthy account, though. One reason to write memoirs is to tell your side of the story, and Da Ponte spends a lot of time settling scores. As a businessman, he's involved with a procession of false friends, who sink him with debts and slanders. At the Italian Opera in London, on the way to being forced out of another position, he juggles the egos of two rapacious divas: "The Lord help you if Morichelli gets a better reception in Martini's opera than I do in mine!" says one. His philosophy grows bitter--"I trusted in him blindly and was, as usual, barbarously tricked by him"--yet he always has another idea for making cash and, in later years, spreading the gospel of Italian literature in the New World.
Da Ponte doesn't interrupt his tale to ask probing questions. The most important period, his association with Mozart, passes with disappointing brevity. Though he salutes the composer's genius, he offers no insights into Mozart's personality or their collaboration. Da Ponte was busy at the time, however. He says he wrote Don Giovanni simultaneously with two other librettos: one in the morning, one in the afternoon, one at night.
This annotated version is a little short on notes. Da Ponte's many phrases in Latin and the untranslated Italian expressions could use some commentary. The notes do inform us when the author is mixing up his facts, which is fairly often. The 1929 translation by Elisabeth Abbott, blending 18th-century elegance with 20th-century crispness, has previously been available only in an expensive hardcover edition. This paperback is part of the New York Review of Books Classics imprint, an invaluable series that republishes worthy but hard-to-get titles. Da Ponte's book fills the bill admirably. --David Olivenbaum
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
I trawled my way through this book as I usually like to start what I finish, but, my, it was hard going. The first half particularly is basically a lot of score settling which comes across as being so irrelevant especially now two centuries later. Half the time, my mind wandered and I just found the whole thing difficult to follow. Da Ponte seems full of self-pity and perhaps a justified sense of victimhood. Anyone would think he was a failure!
Rating:  -
Da Ponte's Memoirs are a worthy, if eccentric, addition to the NYRB catalog, but the NYRB provides almost no help in situating it. This translation first appeared, I believe, in 1929 and has been available in recent years from both Dover and Da Capo. One, (or was it both?), carried an excellent preface by the distinguished scholar of the Renaissance, Thomas Bergin. NYRB does not republish Bergin. It does republish the original 1929 introduction (by Arthur Livingston, once a teacher of Italian ... Read More
Rating:  -
The best thing about this book is the preface by Charles Rosen. The rest it hugely disappointing. It is amazing how a poet can be so non-descriptive! How can any writer has been friends with both Mozart and Casanova and yet have nothing to say about them? One gets no sense of what life was like during the end of the 18th century at all. Even Da Ponte's own thoughts and motives do not come across. All that is left are petty political games at an assortment of different opera houses. Da Ponte's ... Read More
Television Show
Collectibles
Movie Searches
|
|
|
Search for posters,
art prints, photos, collectables, merchandise, toys, t-shirts
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Join the Nielsen//NetRatings Research Panel and you could win a new car, a dream vacation, a dream home makeover or $50,000 Cash!
TV Guide
Program listings, celebrity profiles, industry
gossip, movie reviews, puzzle.
More
Entertainment
& TV Magazines
This site is
Hosted
by Bluehost
Read
my Bluehost Review
Original Superhero & other designs for t-shirts, bumper
stickers, prints, mugs, and other cool merchandise. |
|
