
Looks at the life and work of Lorenzo Da Ponte in a poem, including his early conversion to Catholicism and an insincere stint as a priest, his dealings with Casanova, and his best-known achievement--the writing of the libretto for Mozart's Marriage of Figaro.

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...