Say “The Marriage of Figaro” to your average arts fan, and two names leap to mind: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who wrote the music to the opera; and Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, who penned the controversial play on which it was based. Few think of Lorenzo da Ponte, the poet who adapted Beaumarchais’ text into the libretto for Mozart’s opera.
“Opera is a combination of art forms,” says Richard Buckley, artistic director of Austin Lyric Opera, whose production of Le Nozze di Figaro opens Friday, April 29. “It is music, but not without drama, and similarly not without specific words expressing the situations. Da Ponte, working from the play, was able to give Mozart a libretto that truly communicated the play.” Buckley admires da Ponte for the poetic power of his language, which gave Mozart a “vehicle” to drive the story forward yet allowed room for his music. But just who was this man behind the words behind the music?
Lorenzo da Ponte was born neither a Lorenzo nor a da Ponte, but Emanuele Conegliano, the eldest son of Jewish parents living in Ceneda, Italy, in 1749. After his mother died, his father remarried, but to a Christian woman, which required the entire family to convert to Catholicism. The custom of the day was for a newly baptized family to adopt the surname of the presiding bishop; thus the Coneglianos became the da Pontes, and as eldest son, Emanuele, took the bishop’s first name, Lorenzo, as well.
Da Ponte tried to make a career of Catholicism by enrolling in the seminary. But though he was ordained a priest in 1773, the vow of chastity proved too difficult for him; Da Ponte’s numerous dalliances with married women enraged his superiors, who exiled him from Venice in 1779.
Eventually da Ponte arrived in Vienna, where he acquired the position of court poet to Emperor Joseph II and met Mozart. In 1786, they collaborated on Le Nozze di Figaro, which, due to the controversial nature of the material – Beaumarchais’ play had been banned from the stage for its criticism of the ruling class – had to be written in secret. Da Ponte himself took the finished product directly to the emperor, insisting that he had “cut anything that might offend good taste or public decency.” A few selections of the piece were played for the emperor. The royal ear was pleased with Mozart’s music, and the opera allowed to proceed.
Mozart and da Ponte repeated the success of Figaro twice more, with Don Giovanni (1787) and Così Fan Tutte (1790), forming a group that many consider the finest operas of Mozart’s career (if not all opera). During the composition of Don Giovanni, Da Ponte and Mozart lived in apartments across the street from each other in Prague and would shout out the window to each other as they worked. This fruitful partnership ended prematurely, however; in 1791, Mozart died and da Ponte lost his position as court poet.
From Vienna, da Ponte’s life follows an even more curious route. In Trieste, he met an Englishwoman, married her, and moved to London, where he wrote for the Drury Lane Theatre, lost and regained his position several times, and finally declared bankruptcy. Impoverished, he set sail for the United States, where he pursued assorted dead-end jobs – New Jersey grocer, Pennsylvania medicine merchant – before settling into a life as a teacher of Italian language and culture. He was awarded a professorship at Columbia University, and his personal library became the core of its Italian collection. In 1833, he founded the Italian Opera House in New York City. Five years later, da Ponte died in New York. His body, like that of his friend and greatest collaborator, Mozart, was buried in an unmarked grave. 
The Marriage of Figaro runs April 29-May 2, Friday-Monday, at Bass Concert Hall. For more information, call 472-5992 or visit www.austinlyricopera.org.
This article appears in April 29 • 2005.