Synopsis
Epic poem, biography, literary criticism, historical romance - in A Gift, David Slavitt presents the fascinating life of Mozart's librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte, one of history's great unknowns, a man blessed and cursed by his conviction that within him lay the capacity for literary greatness.
Educated in the church, the young da Ponte carouses in Venice, flees Italy, and finds himself in Austria, trying to establish a career in the theatre. Under the tepid patronage of Joseph II of Austria, he turns out libretti for Salieri and learns the "whorey tricks" of writing on demand: "Adaptation, translation, theft."
Then, on the brink of despair, he encounters Mozart - boorish, preferring crude farce to literary grace. Still, the partnership thrives with The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, Cosi fan tutte. But good luck is not to be trusted, and "misfortune is not reliable either."
Despite his brilliant gift, success eludes da Ponte. Ever gullible, ever generous, he is destined to accumulate others' debts, to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, to be forgotten. Da Ponte lives out his life in the fledgling United States, plagued by sickness, debt, and the implacably looming specter of failure.
Slavitt has created a lovely, heartening book, one that reminds us that untested faith is no faith at all. Alight with muted passion, A Gift chronicles a man's refusal to despair despite the growing awareness that nothing awaits but poverty and ignominy - "that this ill-fitting garment is what the wardrobe holds." Through Slavitt's lively imagination, we feel reverence rather than pity for the dogged nobility of da Ponte's struggle. Ultimately, Lorenzo da Ponte is a hero, his life a victory.
Reviews
A literary biography in the form of verse, Slavitt's long poem chronicles the life of Lorenzo da Ponte, an obscure writer of vast ambition and frequent failure whose only enduring works are the several librettos he wrote for Mozart. Featuring a cast of characters including Casanova, Emperor Joseph II, Clement Moore (the author of "The Night Before Christmas") and, of course, Amadeus himself, Slavitt's poem succeeds both as literary history and as verse. Da Ponte's story, while largely a series of disappointments, is as crammed with incident as a picaresque novel. From the twists and turns of da Ponte's unhappy life, Slavitt takes off on meditations of the curious routes of fate: "Like a mother,/ a run of good luck will sicken, die,/ and leave you/ orphaned,/ renamed,/ unselfed,/ undone." As da Ponte struggles with his own mediocrity and the malign jockeying for position intrinsic to the patronage system, Slavitt presents a highly sympathetic portrait of a man grappling with his own limitations: "There are only disimprovements now/ in body and spirit, a settling/ for what is,/ a recognition that this ill-fitting garment/ is what the wardrobe holds."
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Here's a poem for opera buffs, for its subject is Lorenzo da Ponte (1749^-1838), librettist for Mozart's Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Cosifan tutte. His long life was stuffed with the picaresque. Born a Jew, he was opportunistically converted by his father and early and insincerely became a priest but was, also early, a rake who knew Casanova and a never-quite-successful theatrical writer-impresario. He eventually married and emigrated to America, winding up his days teaching at Columbia College in New York and translating Byron's mordant "Prophecy of Dante" into Italian. Slavitt rehearses this colorful life melancholically, for his vantage on it is da Ponte's old age, when da Ponte clearly sees that its high points were a young-lust affair with a woman whose language he could not speak (nor she his) and his collaboration with Mozart. Cast in a quick-moving approximation of blank verse (rhyme is used only to twit Mozart, who disliked it), this poetic biography is just the thing to read before curtain's rise. Ray Olson
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