Mozart’s Jewish Librettist: A Brief History of a Poorly Kept Secret

Lorenzo da Ponte, the librettist of Mozart’s three greatest Italian operas, was born a Jew, a fact rumored about during his lifetime but not definitively established until 1900. The treatment (or not) of Da Ponte’s Jewish origins as documented from his time to the present constitutes a history of concealment, rumor, discovery, denigration, and exploitation. Its nadir was reached during the Nazi period, its zenith most recently, as the poet, hitherto a secondary player in the Mozart biographies, has emerged as the colorful protagonist in substantial biographies of his own.