Born Emmanuele Conegliano in Ceneda, Venetian Republic, the man known as Mozart’s librettist began life as a poet, scribbling verse during tedious school lessons. Those teenage experiments, plus a solid grounding in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek, primed him for the writing life ahead. When a young Mozart, already famous, requested his assistance, Da Ponte agreed; thus began their illustrious collaboration. Between librettos, Da Ponte lived adventurously, gambling, living in brothels, and writing seditious poetry, for which he was twice tried and convicted. Da Ponte settled in America, selling Italian books and writing a long, lively autobiography.
The theater troupe at the Saidye Bronfman Centre decided to practice a bit of outreach to the city’s French Canadian majority by staging a play by the Québécois dramatist Michel Tremblay. It wouldn’t…
These hollow, spool-shaped terra-cotta objects from Beth Shemesh would hold one or more pellets (often small pebbles) that when shaken would produce a sound. They have been considered babies’ toys…
The pen-on-paper Tu tournes lentement, an example of surrealist automatic painting, depicts women and fragmented humanoid shapes in dance-like movement. It was drawn by Paul Păun during World War II…