File:1929 Da Ponte (Abbott) en.jpg

1st Italian ed. (1823)

{en} Lorenzo Da Ponte (tr. Elisabeth Abbott). Memoirs, ed. Arthur Livingston <1883-1944>. Philadelphia, PA & London [England]: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1929 <1823>. <Italian ed.>

Other editions

New English ed. (1959)

New English ed. (2000)

• {en} With a new Preface by Thomas Goddard Bergin <1904-1987>. New York, NY [USA]: Dover, 1959. / Repr. 1967.
• {en} With a new Preface by Stanley Sadie. New York, NY [USA]: Da Capo Press, 1987.
• {en} With a new Preface by Charles Rosen. New York, NY [USA]: New York Review Books, 2000.

Abstract

"Plot and counterplot lie at the heart of Don Giovanni, Così 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."--Publisher description (2000).

"I shall speak of things . . . so singular in their oddity as in some manner to instruct, or at least entertain, without wearying." —Lorenzo da Ponte