If you can name the first person on the faculty of Columbia who was raised Jewish, you can name the first faculty member who was a Catholic priest.
They are the same person, Lorenzo Da Ponte. He’s less well known as an academic than as a librettist. He wrote the books for Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni and Casi fan tutti. He collaborated with several composers on 28 operas.
Any account of how opera came to this country would have to include Da Ponte. But any account of his life would have to mention how he was banished from the Republic of Venice. While serving as a priest, he was accused of living in a brothel, where he staged shows. Casanova was a carousing buddy.
Da Ponte left Venice with his mistress and their children. He found fame in Vienna.
Da Ponte was a colorful, notorious and brilliant. I don’t know what the equivalent of “Mozart’s collaborator” would be on an academic resume today, but I imagine it would be impressive.
I’ve been thinking about Da Ponte because I’ve been thinking about tolerance in democratic societies.
Da Ponte was in his 50s when he came to this country and became a citizen at 79. At 84, he was behind the construction of the country’s first real opera house.
This was the 1830s, the days of Jacksonian Democracy, a period when Jews, Catholics and immigrants were persecuted, when Native Americans were set on the Trail of Tears, when slavery was defended and expanded.
It was a famous age of intolerance, a period when the country was focused on what it could keep out, rather than the good it could let in.
