Memoirs (New York Review Books Classics)

Rating:
Summary: Interesting Book, Shameful Presentation
Review: 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 at Columbia) but with no hint of its provenance and, so far as I can discern, no mention of the date (the biblio page gives you a hint when it mentions a "renewal copyright" dated 1957). There is also an LC entry identifying "Livingston, Arthur, 1883-" but I doubt very much that Livingston was still alive when NYRB published in 2000. There is a preface by the distinguished music-scholar Charles Rosen, but it is beneath him: a slapdash affair that does little aside from assuring us that Italian olive oil is now available everywhere in America.

Aside from these matters of production - the text itself is absorbing and instructive if you understand what you are getting. Da Ponte's only real claim to fame is, of course, that he is the librettist of Mozart's three great comic operas. Da Ponte cheerily declares that Mozart was the greatest composer of his time - perhaps the greatest ever - yet he gives this greatest of all composers perhaps a half dozen pages out of the entire 472-page text, less than any of a dozen other drifters and dreamers or down-market impresarios whom he met along the way.

Rather than reading it as a work of music criticism, you can take it as a loose-jointed adventure story, in the tradition of Casanova (Da Ponte claims him as a friend) or Benvenuto Cellini. A perhaps more interesting comparison would be to Stendhal's "Charterhouse of Parma": readers who are scandalized that Da Ponte gives such short shrift to Mozart will recall that Stendhal's hero trekked all unknowing through the Battle of Waterloo. I suppose it is just possible that Stendhal read Da Ponte: I have no idea whether he did in fact. But it doesn't matter; the comparison adds a gratifying resonance anyway.

Moreover, even if this book is not remotely useful as direct criticism of Mozart, I think it does cast the great libretti in a new light: you come to understand the schemers and seducers of the Mozart operas were not a mere nonce creation: they accompanied Da Ponte throughout the whole of his long and rumbustious life. "I trusted them and they betrayed me..." would be a pretty good title for the whole. You can certainly tire of his preening, his score-settling his tale-telling. Indeed you come pretty quickly to realize that not 100 percent of it can possibly true. How much, then? 80 percent? 50? 20? Of course I have no idea: maybe 50 will do as a guess. But I don't think that matters either. Recall what Goethe said about Livy: yes, they are just stories, but they are good stories. At the end, I think you can give Da Ponte credit for his most (nearly) disinterested passion: his desire to spread Italian culture to the Anglo-Saxon world. In this light, we can greet him on his own terms: se non e vero, e ben trovato.

Four stars for the book, one for the presentation. Compromise on three.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting Book, Shameful Presentation
Review: 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 at Columbia) but with no hint of its provenance and, so far as I can discern, no mention of the date (the biblio page gives you a hint when it mentions a "renewal copyright" dated 1957). There is also an LC entry identifying "Livingston, Arthur, 1883-" but I doubt very much that Livingston was still alive when NYRB published in 2000. There is a preface by the distinguished music-scholar Charles Rosen, but it is beneath him: a slapdash affair that does little aside from assuring us that Italian olive oil is now available everywhere in America.

Aside from these matters of production - the text itself is absorbing and instructive if you understand what you are getting. Da Ponte's only real claim to fame is, of course, that he is the librettist of Mozart's three great comic operas. Da Ponte cheerily declares that Mozart was the greatest composer of his time - perhaps the greatest ever - yet he gives this greatest of all composers perhaps a half dozen pages out of the entire 472-page text, less than any of a dozen other drifters and dreamers or down-market impresarios whom he met along the way.

Rather than reading it as a work of music criticism, you can take it as a loose-jointed adventure story, in the tradition of Casanova (Da Ponte claims him as a friend) or Benvenuto Cellini. A perhaps more interesting comparison would be to Stendhal's "Charterhouse of Parma": readers who are scandalized that Da Ponte gives such short shrift to Mozart will recall that Stendhal's hero trekked all unknowing through the Battle of Waterloo. I suppose it is just possible that Stendhal read Da Ponte: I have no idea whether he did in fact. But it doesn't matter; the comparison adds a gratifying resonance anyway.

Moreover, even if this book is not remotely useful as direct criticism of Mozart, I think it does cast the great libretti in a new light: you come to understand the schemers and seducers of the Mozart operas were not a mere nonce creation: they accompanied Da Ponte throughout the whole of his long and rumbustious life. "I trusted them and they betrayed me..." would be a pretty good title for the whole. You can certainly tire of his preening, his score-settling his tale-telling. Indeed you come pretty quickly to realize that not 100 percent of it can possibly true. How much, then? 80 percent? 50? 20? Of course I have no idea: maybe 50 will do as a guess. But I don't think that matters either. Recall what Goethe said about Livy: yes, they are just stories, but they are good stories. At the end, I think you can give Da Ponte credit for his most (nearly) disinterested passion: his desire to spread Italian culture to the Anglo-Saxon world. In this light, we can greet him on his own terms: se non e vero, e ben trovato.

Four stars for the book, one for the presentation. Compromise on three.

Rating:
Summary: Third-rate at best.
Review: 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 story is less amusing than the description of a single flirtation in the truly interesting and picaresque memoirs of his friend Casanova.

Rating:
Summary: Third-rate at best.
Review: 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 story is less amusing than the description of a single flirtation in the truly interesting and picaresque memoirs of his friend Casanova.