When reading through a list of early Sunbury Merchants, you will find the name Lorenzo Da Ponte. The man who wrote the text for three of Mozarts greatest operas, a close friend of Clement C. Moore, and a man who had his portrait painted by Samuel Morse... this same man also later ran a grocery store & held a distillers license in Sunbury Pa.
As one essayist wrote, "How many lives was Lorenzo Da Ponte able to live in the eighty-nine years that took place between his birth in a Jewish ghetto outside Venice in 1749 and his death in New York? The mere outline of dates and places is already somewhat astonishing: for someone to reach such longevity at a time when the median life expectancy was under forty years"
Da Pontes time in Sunbury is very well documented, not only in countless books, but also in Da Ponte's own memoirs. It's also commemorated on a historical marker in town:
Mozart's librettist in the 1780s for "The Marriage of Figaro," "Don Giovanni," and "Cosi fan tutte" came to America in 1805 and lived in Sunbury from June 1811 to August 1818. Da Ponte wrote that on visiting Sunbury, the adopted home of his wife's family, "I grew so enamored of the town that I resolved to settle there." A teacher, distiller, and merchant, he lived at the southwest corner of Third and Market Streets.
Not only was Da Ponte Mozarts Librettist [a librettist is a person who writes the text of an opera ] but as one writer notes "it remains amusing to remember that, when the pair first met in 1783, it was Mozart who was starstruck by his illustrious elder. Some seven years the composer's senior, Da Ponte was at that time already shining among Vienna's brightest lights. As the official poet to the Habsburg's court theatre, he was ironically best known for composing librettos for Antonio Salieri – the long-term court opera composer misleadingly portrayed as Mozart's nemesis in blockbuster biopic Amadeus." 1
Lorenzo married Nancy Grahl the daughter of John Grahl, a German business man .
After Nancy married Lorenzo, her family went to America. There they bought and sold property, dealt in groceries, worked as chemists and distillers, and generally, just made money. The family fortune is likely what brought the Da Pontes to follow Nancy's older sister not only to America, but later to Sunbury.
In his memoirs, Da Ponte writes lyrical descriptions of the beautiful
Susquehanna Valley. Streams cool and sweet, majestic solitude, and "the amusements of gentle company", and "at various seasons of the year there are trout so tasteful to the palate that the lakes of Como and Garda offer not better ones to the fastidious Lombard." 6
Sunbury Square, as shown in an English translation of Da Ponte's memoirs
"Not till one reaches the last crest does Sunbury come into view. The entrance to the town promises little to the travelers observing eye: no cleanliness of streets, no magnificence of structures, no thronging of inhabitants, but as one goes on a little more than half a mile to reach that part of town which spreads along the bank of the Susquehanna, a noble and navigable stream, the view becomes truly marvelous in virtue of the various turns of the river, of the woods, the hills, and the villages which are sprinkled along the opposite shore." 6
On the advice of his brother in law, Peter Grahl, Da Ponte had stocked up in tradeable goods, especially medicines, and when he arrived in Sunbury he rented a small house by the river, from where he set up shop.
Da Ponte wrote that in this delightful section of Sunbury where he rented a house, lived "the most respectable families of the place". He named his neighbors as the Grants [Charles and Thomas Grant], the Halls [Charles & Elizabeth Coleman Hall], The Buiers [John Buyers] and the Smiths [Enoch Smith], all large landholders at the time.
"We soon became associated in the most cordial friendships and passed the first year and a great part of the second in perfect harmony, providing for each other those enjoyments and pastimes which good manners and the usage of respectable societies afford to people cultivated, prosperous, and honorable. Nightly gatherings, rural dances, jovial dinners, amusements of gentle company, were the delights of the saner part of that village."
Da Ponte tutored Robert Coleman Hall, oldest son of Charles and Elizabeth, preparing him for Princeton, and later tutored their younger sons as well. In addition, he gave lessons to a number of ladies of the village, and from the neighboring town of Northumberland.
Daponte's memoirs specifically praised Mrs. Elizabeth [Coleman] Hall, wife, of Charles Hall. You may remember that Robert Coleman had purchased Muncy Farms (the Wallis Home) for Elizabeth, as a wedding present when she married Charles. The Halls also had a home in Sunbury, where Charles was a very successful lawyer. Hall was Da Ponte's attorney, protector and helper, "serving him as an attorney in the direst of straits, always without pay."
Of Elizabeth, Da Ponte wrote:
I will name one, among the many, who, through her affability, her suavity of manner, her purity of character, and especially through her exemplary fulfillment of every domestic duty, may be put forward without fear as the perfect model of the housewife. Mrs Elizabeth Hall is the revered lady of whom I speak: daughter of one of the wealthiest citizens of the State of Pennsylvania, which gratefully and respectfully honors his memory' the wife and now unfortunately the widow of one of the most celebrated lawyers of that county and happy mother to a family of handsome and most amiable children.
The townspeople in general took to Da Ponte; one of them later described him as a “perfectly honest man, a delightful companion, unsuspicious and often led into trouble by rogues …”
Cash was in short supply among the farming community, and Da Ponte was often paid "in kind". Log wood, almonds, sausages, and prunes appeared in his store room. With a surplus of grain, he set his hand to distilling, gaining a reputation for producing a spirit similar to a good French brandy.
All sources and mentions of Da Ponte in Sunbury refer to the house he built on Third and Market Street. His distillers license in 1815, however, references the town of Northumberland in the County of Northumberland. It's possible the business he was partnering in was already based there.
"One still of the capacity of two hundred twenty one gallons, including the head thereof, situate in the Town Of Northumberland in the county of North and state of Pennsylvania, now belonging to William Taggert and under the superintendence or management of John Painter to be employed in distilling spirits from domestic materials for the term of size months from the 27th day of October one thousand eight hundred and fifteen."
In an age where many men died before the age of 50, Da Ponte was in his mid 60s when he began transporting skins, butter, wax, fruit and grain to the markets of Philadelphia, and he would return with nails, medicines, oil, shoes, and yard of dimity to sell in Sunbury. The wagon with which he delivered goods between Philadelphia and the outlying towns became a familiar turnpike sight.
"It is certainly astonishing that at such an advanced age and after so many disasters I should have had the courage to undertake and successfully carry the burden of so many travels! The readers of these Memoirs will ahve reason to marvel all the more when I tell him that in the space of 7 years I crossed the Ridge 72 times, and not always in the season of the laurel blossoms."
During those frequent trips, Da Ponte had had two serious accidents. He was fortunate to receive treatment for his broken bones by American medical pioneers Dr. Philip Syng Physick and Dr. Benjamin Smith Barton.
Dr. Physick, the Doctor known as the father of American Surgery, is credited with the first soda pop. Physick's invention was based on another local connection - Joseph Priestly's "Fizzy Water." Priestly's experiments in carbonating water had interested the surgeon. He contacted a druggist, Townsend Speakman, to make this "charged water" for his patients, offering it as a cure for gastric distress. In 1807, the men came up with the idea to add flavoring to the water, and the very first soda "pop" was born, in Philadelphia PA.
While Da Ponte was in Northumberland County Pa, he was still being praised in newspapers in London. The above article ran in the London Morning Chronicle in 1813, and a similar article ran in 1818, as Da Ponte was facing absolute ruin in Sunbury.
Footnotes in the English translation of Da Pontes memoirs note that Da Ponte had a store at " Lot 21, ie, South East Corner of Market and Third Streets, across Third from the future brick house. Tom Robins lived on lot 23, directly across Market street from Peter Grahls. Robins tannery was directly across market street from Da Pontes store and when the east wind blew, must have smelled up the town."
In 1814, Lorenzo Da Ponte built the first three-story brick dwelling in Sunbury and was its second highest taxpayer, behind Charles Hall. The Brick building was constructed on the South West Corner of Market and Third, and for the next 30 years, "L. De Ponty's Three story brick" was to be the only three story structure in the county."
I know some of you are going to ask me if the house still stands. It seems unlikely that it would exist today and just be used without any acknowledgement of who built it - but it's not impossible. A 1948 newspaper article states that Lorenzo Daponte operated a distillery where Baum store on Market Square Stands. The photo above shows Baums store, in a three story brick building at the corner of market and 3rd. That building is still there today. Whether or not it is the same structure built in 1814, I cannot tell you for certain.
Da Ponte's memoirs include several accounts of those who stole from him, while he was in Sunbury. Staff stole from him, merchants cheated him, and people whom he had trusted with credit could not pay. Taxes, due to an unfair law discriminating against small scale distillers, took his profits from distilling.
"But these were not the greatest wrongs I suffered in that place where they bury the sun."
Thomas Robins, known in Sunbury as "Big Tom Hundred Legs", raided the Da Ponte home while Lorenzo was away, making off with stoves, furniture, horses, and a cart.
Da Ponte attempted to sue Robins, but the court case was delayed when the sheriff retired and "no one has the courage to take his place.". Forcibly removed from his house by a creditor, Da Ponte moved his family to a small wooden house next door.
In his memoirs he writes of a "traitor from Northumberland - his despicable name shall not befoul these pages - who first robbed me of a property worth several hundred dollars, then tried to smirch my name and reputation and sown the seeds of discord among various members of my family. Your pardon, kindly reader, if, after exciting your curiosity perhaps, I suddenly halt my story at this point. There are crimes that cannot be told without crime."
"Are there there no laws in most unhappy Sunbury? Yes, answers Dante, 'Laws there are, but who lays hand to them?' " - Memoirs of Da Ponte
"But eventually the old combination of poor judgment and misplaced trust caught up with him again. He was cheated roundly, according to writs and legal claims; no one who owed him could pay, and the people to whom he owed money wanted him in jail. In 1816 he sold off all his business possessions for $1,203.38—not enough by half to settle all his debts.
August 5, 1819
Susquehanna Democrat
In addition to the rogues and thieves, Da Ponte was embroiled in constant legal battles, attempting to overturn wills and profit from his wife's family.
Da Ponte never did see any Grahl money. When old John Grahl died, his son Peter managed the estate so badly there was soon nothing left. When Nancy’s sister died, she left money to Nancy and the five Da Ponte children but not a cent to Lorenzo. She obviously recognized his talent for losing money." 1
On August 14 1818, at the age of 69, Lorenzo Da Ponte left Sunbury, to make yet another fresh start. "at twelve o'clock in the morning I bade my last farewell to the, for me, new Egypt and its most fatal inhabitants."
In 1882, the Sunbury Weekly News published the poem, Address To The Susquehanna, written by Joseph Da Ponte, son of Lorenzo. Joseph, age 15, had lived half his life in Sunbury. His poem, first been published in the Northumberland Times, in 1819, speaks of the beauty of the Susquehanna River Valley, and ends with a farewell:
"But thy beauties henceforth must exist not for me - Fate calls and its voice I obey. To realms, Susquehanna, far distant from thee, Its summons compel me away.
Flood of woodland and mountains adieu! I shall see thee, loved river, no more - But in fancy's fond mirror how oft I shall view, Thy mountains, thy waves, thy shore."
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The news published two Da Ponte poems in the October 6 1882 edition. The one above, and also " a poem written by the elder Da Ponte, and translated from the Italian by son Joseph. Aunt Jane Wilson says these persons resided on Market street sixty five years ago."
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MORE ABOUT THE LIFE OF LORENZO DA PONTE
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Lucky is he who takes
The good in all
And through chance and events
By reason is led.
What is wont to make others weep
For him is cause for laughter
And in the turmoil of the world
He will find peace.
from the Finale of Cosi fan tutte
"Da Ponte lived by his wits, being variously a priest, poet, greengrocer, and the first professor of Italian at Columbia University. He became famous for writing the libretti for Mozart’s operas DonGiovanni, The Marriage of Figaro, and Cosi Fan Tutte."
"To call him, in his European phase, a Casanova is at once to slander and to overpraise him. He was not, even in Europe, a charlatan, a swindler and a sharper, taking advantage of the stupidity of others for the excitement of using his wits: he was rather, at the worst, a userer and a speculator, handicapped by a large dose of native honesty and a tender heart... Nothing was more precious to Da Ponte than the good opinion of men contemporary and unborn." - Arthur Livingston
"The son of a poor Jewish tanner, Da Ponte was born forty miles north of Venice, in 1749. He converted to Catholicism as a child when his father remarried, became first a priest, then an abbé, then an infamous adulterer, and then, like his good friend Giovanni Giacomo Casanova, a forced exile from his native Venice. He was subsequently appointed the official theater poet to Emperor Joseph II in Vienna and became the librettist for Mozart’s three greatest Italian operas—and, incidentally, a prime supplier of words for lesser composers, including Antonio Salieri. His collaboration with Mozart is widely considered the most brilliant in the history of opera. After all this he ended up in New York and embarked there on an epic American journey marked by academic honors, literary fame, and years of struggle as a grocer in rural Pennsylvania." 2
"Lorenzo Da Ponte, known above all as Mozart's librettist, and whose youth much resembled that of Casanova, was accused of having eaten ham on Friday and was obliged to flee from Venice in 1777, to escape the punishment of the Tribunal of Blasphemies." - 3
After leaving Venice, Da Ponte went to London. There he wrote and staged Italian operas at the King’s Theatre in the Haymarket, & became a publisher and bookseller and the friend of London’s social and cultural leaders. He met and married an English woman, Nancy Gahl, and the couple had 4 children.
At one point Da Ponte obtained a letter recommending him to the interest of Marie Antoinette, but while journeying toward Paris learned of the imprisonment of the Queen, and went to London instead.
Da Ponte ignored the best advice Casanova had ever given him—“Never back another man’s note”—and a dozen creditors were now ready to send him to debtor’s prison. He sent his wife and children on ahead to New York In April of 1904, Da Ponte sent his wife Nancy and their four children to Philadelphia, to join her relatives there. Unfortunately, Da Ponte never learned from his mistakes, and his memoirs are riddled with instances of his partners, employees, and friends stealing from him.
Eight months after his wife left for America, Lorenzo Da Ponte, at the age of 56, borrowed a hundred guineas from a friend, spending forty-four dollars of it for a ticket on a ship to New York. He promptly lost the rest of the money playing poker on the voyage. Upon arrival on June 4, 1805 , and had to borrow back thirty-two of the dollars he lost, to pay the customs duty on his luggage.
“I well knew that my dramatic talents would avail me but little in this country, in which the knowledge of the Italian language was so limited; but I felt a sympathetic affection for the Americans,” he later wrote. “I had, besides, suffered so much in aristocratical republics, and monarchial governments, that I pleased myself with the hope of finding happiness in a country which I thought free.”
Following the advice of his father-in-law, and recognizing that his fame and talent would not put food on the table in New York, Da Ponte invested in a grocery store. He promptly embarked in business, trafficking in tobacco, liquors, drugs, etc.--goods which promised large profits.
Three months later, a yellow fever outbreak scared him sufficiently to sent him to
Elizabethtown, N. J. HIs year in N.J. ruined him financially - not for the first, nor for the last, time.
From a stage play by Tim Perrino, "The Nights Before Christmas", in which the enduring friendship of Clement and Da Ponte is featured.
It was while in New York that Da Ponte met Clement Moore.
Lorenzo Da Ponte, as painted by Samuel Morse
It's unknown exactly how Da Ponte came to know Samuel Morse, the inventor of the telegraph, but it's possible the two were introduced by James Fenimore Cooper. Cooper was just one of the American writers Da Ponte knew. Others included Washington Irving, & Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
A talented artist, Samuel Morse is best known today for his invention of the telegraph. For that invention, we have another local connection. An early supporter of Samuel F.B. Morse and his idea for a telegraph, James Pollock of Milton was instrumental in getting Congress to appropriate a small amount to help build the first line. Pollock was present in the room when the first message, "What hath God wrought" was received, ushering in a new age of telecommunication. 4
After failing in business in Sunbury, Da Ponte in 1818 returned to New York, friends including Clement Moore having send him small loans. Moore encouraged him to once again take up teaching.
When Da Ponte arrived back in New York, he donated sixty volumes of Italian classics to the New York Public Library. Those books became the foundation of the country’s first Italian collection. He enrolled his son Joseph at Columbia College and began the work of recruiting new pupils.
Da Ponte published is memoirs in four volumes written between 1823 and 1827.
In 1825 Lorenzo Da Ponte was named the first ever professor of Italian at Columbia College. The title was largely ceremonial, as with most language professorships of the time, it came with no salary. Da Ponte was responsible for recruiting his own paying pupils.
Da Ponte, now 76 years old, next embarked on a mission to bring real Italian Opera to New York.
He had joined forced with Stephen Price, and Dominic Lynch.
On November 29 1825, with box seats selling for two dollars and with Joseph Bonaparte, the former King of Spain, in the glittering audience, a performance of The Barber of Seville began the era of Italian opera in America.
Dick Adler, in an article for American Heritage Magazine, describes Garcia's first encounter with Da Ponte:
"It was to be a historic moment, the opening of the very first authentic production of an Italian opera in America, in November 1825. A tall, gaunt old man, with dark eyes, a hawklike nose, and sunken cheeks, nervously approached the New York hotel room of the Spanish tenor who would lead the performance, Manuel García. The old man had done great service to the cause of opera: He had written thirty-six librettos for the leading composers of Europe, including the words to three of the greatest operas of all time, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte , and The Marriage of Figaro . But that had been long ago, in another life; for twenty years he had been living in relative obscurity in America. Perhaps García was no student of musical history.
García answered the old man’s knock, and the man introduced himself: ”I am Lorenzo Da Ponte.” “Da Ponte? The man who wrote Don Giovanni ? Alive, here in America?” Tears filled the Spanish singer’s eyes; he clasped the seventy-six-year-old librettist in his arms and danced him around the room, singing “Fin ch’han dal vino,” the immortal drinking song from Don Giovanni ."
Da Ponte mounted an energetic one-man publicity campaign on behalf of Garci;a’s engagement and helped train an American woman in Italian cooking so she could run a boardinghouse, called Aunt Sallie’s, to complement the Da Pontes’ own residence. As one of his students remembered later, visiting opera singers dining at the Da Pontes’ were
That first season—with five more operas by Rossini and two by García—did so well that a second was quickly planned. Da Ponte suggested adding what he always called “my Don Giovanni ” to the schedule, and so that opera received its first American performance at the Park on May 23, 1826, almost thirty-five years after Mozart’s death.
Da Ponte published Italian and English versions of the libretto and sold them in the theater and in bookshops. The proprietor of one of these shops persuaded Da Ponte to buy a lottery ticket. He won five hundred dollars and spent it importing rare books from Italy that are now part of the Columbia library.
In December 1831 Nancy Da Ponte died of pneumonia. She was sixty-two. Da Ponte wrote to his boyhood friend Michèle Colombo in Italy: “That of which I intend to inform you is the untimely and unexpected death of that angel-like woman whom you saw in London. … She was taken away from me in only six days, and what was and is my grief at her death, neither you could imagine, nor I describe.” In her memory he wrote a slim volume of poems, Sonetti per la morte di Anna Celestina Ernestina Da Ponte .
At the age of eighty-four-year, Da Ponte decided in 1833 that what was needed to make opera succeed in New York was a real opera house. A gorgeous white, blue and gold theater, with a tier made up entirely of boxes and a magnificent chandelier showing off the elaborately painted dome and walls, opened in November 1833 at the corner of Church and Leonard streets.
Twenty eight performances were held the first season, and lost thirty thousand dollars that first year. Da Ponte was edged out of management for the second season, but still the theater lost money. The building was turned into a dramatic theater, and then was destroyed by fire in 1836.
Lorenzo Da Ponte died of old age on August 17,1838, seven months short of his ninetieth birthday. He had been born seven years before Mozart. When he died, Verdi was beginning his career in Milan.
One obituary, in the Baltimore Sun 9/19/1838 stated " a gentleman of the most distinguished talents an literary attainments, and one who claimed the honor of having been the first to lay the foundation of the Italian language in the new world..."
It went on to say that Lorenzo's works "compose six volumes - chiefly tragedies - operas - fugitive pieces, and his memoirs - written in the old style of Rousseau. "
Lorenzo da Ponte (1749-1838),[34] a native of Ceneda, was exiled from
the republic of Venice, where he had been schoolmaster, on account of
his opinions and manner of life. After a short stay in Gorz and Dresden,
he came to Vienna, warmly recommended to Salieri by the poet Mazzola,
just as the Italian opera was in process of being established. Through
Salieri's influence he was appointed a theatrical poet by Joseph II.,
who continued to befriend him; he had thus every reason to be beholden
to Salieri. His first attempt was this opera, "Il Ricco d' un Giorno,"
which he did not himself consider a success; Salieri ascribed its
failure, which he felt the more keenly in contrast to Paesiello's
success, solely and entirely to the poet, and swore that he would sooner
cut off his hand than set to music another word of Da Ponte's. He had no
difficulty in obtaining a libretto from Casti, "La Grotta di Trofonio"; and this opera, which was first given on October 12, 1785, was a great success. Da Ponte now saw
himself threatened in his position, for Casti was his declared rival and
opponent." - Life Of Mozart, Vol 3, by Otto Jahn
"Soon after the amateur presentation of _Idomeneo_ in Vienna he had the
good fortune to be brought together with Lorenzo da Ponte, whose real
name was Emmanuele Conegliano and who belonged to a Jewish family in
Ceneda, near Venice. The youth entered a theological seminary and became
an industrious student with a poetic bent, which resulted in quantities
of Italian and Latin verse. An outspoken adventurer, with countless
amorous escapades _à la_ Casanova to his credit, he began his theatrical
career in Dresden, went to Vienna where he was to enjoy the favor of
Joseph II, and in the process of time went to London and finally to
America, where he became a teacher of languages, a liquor merchant, a
theater enthusiast, and what-not. He died in New York many years after
Mozart but, like him, was buried in a grave of which all traces have
been lost." - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart by Peyser
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Sources:
1. https://www.thenationalnews.com/arts/the-relationship-between-mozart-and-lorenzo-da-ponte-1.623880
2. https://www.americanheritage.com/man-who-knew-mozart
4. https://susquehannavalley.blogspot.com/2020/10/james-pollock-milton-pa.html
5. https://hudsonreview.com/2016/07/lives-and-misfortunes-of-lorenzo-da-ponte/#.YpiMzKjMIR4
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The Niccolinis (Nancy Grahl Da Ponte's sisters family), on arriving in Sunbury, have moved into the "stone house" of John Boyd, the Wolverton Mansion known today as the Maclay house.
"The operatic life of the librettist for Don Giovanni and The Marriage of Figaro. In 1805, Lorenzo Da Ponte was the proprietor of a small grocery store in New York. But since his birth into an Italian Jewish family in 1749, he had already been a priest, a poet, the lover of many women, a scandalous Enlightenment thinker banned from teaching in Venice, the librettist for three of Mozart's most sublime operas, a collaborator with Salieri, a friend of Casanova, and a favorite of Emperor Joseph II. He would go on to establish New York City's first opera house and be the first professor of Italian at Columbia University. An inspired innovator but a hopeless businessman, who loved with wholehearted loyalty and recklessness, Da Ponte was one of the early immigrants to live out the American dream. In Rodney Bolt's rollicking and extensively researched biography, Da Ponte's picaresque life takes readers from Old World courts and the back streets of Venice, Vienna, and London to the New World promise of New York City. Two hundred and fifty years after Mozart's birth, the life and legacy of his librettist Da Ponte are as astonishing as ever."
"In June 1805, a 56-year-old Italian immigrant disembarked in Philadelphia carrying only a violin. Before dying in New York 23 years later, in his ninetieth year, he would find New World respectability as a bookseller, then as the first professor of Italian at Columbia University. Abbé Lorenzo da Ponte, a scholarly poet, teacher and priest, with a devoted wife, also had a reputation as a womanizer. He charmed all he met, pioneering the place of Italian music in American life. But his self-assurance also excited mistrust. When the first Italian opera was performed in New York in 1825, he had the nerve to claim he had written it. He had, so he said, known Mozart. Like the memoirs he had recently written to pay off more debts, the old man was so full of tall stories. The many lives of Lorenzo da Ponte—librettist of Mozart's three great operas, The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Cosi Fan Tutte—begin in Venice, linger in Vienna and London and wind up in New York, where today he lies buried in an unmarked grave in one of the world's largest cemeteries."
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September 1882
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The above story, about Thomas Robbins, appears in The History Of Northumberland County, by Everts & Stewart
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