The musical adventure of a traveling poet
Texts from Da Ponte’s autobiography
David Riondino: voice
Mario Carbotta: flute
Myriam Dal Don: violin
Music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Giovanni Possio
Massimiliano Caldi, conductor
Chamber Orchestra “Milano Classica”
A highly original florilegium of music by Salzburg and other composers from the golden age of Italian melodrama The Memoirs, written in New York between 1823 and 1827, is an autobiographical novel of extraordinary literary finesse in which the author champions illustrious Italian literature, but also passionately defends the vituperative poetic language of melodrama that he himself represented in the wake of the ‘scola’ of Metastasio and Goldoni. The narrative then revolves around a playful literary leitmotif – teeth – that serves as a metaphor for the poet’s craft and a kind of poetry “to be chewed with everyday life. “David Riondino’s readings become “almost a new kind of show” thanks to the interweaving of the text with music performed live: an exhilarating anthological succession of librettistics between the 18th and 19th centuries.
Rugginenti label – Year 2004
Reviews
Famiglia Cristiana, July 1, 2004 – Giorgio Vitali
The word pays tribute to music in the CD Da Ponte made …. da ponte, dedicated to the Lorenzo Da Ponte who lived at the turn of the 1700s and 1800s, wrote the libretto for some of Mozart’s masterpieces, and knew emperors and figures of myth. Davide Riondino, actor, author, and intellectual, explains how the idea was born: “Behind the seemingly silly title lies the story of a man who united the two sides of the Atlantic. His monumental autobiography is little known, but extraordinary. So I extracted 23 episodes from it that follow him from birth to death.”
Born in a small town in the Veneto region and died in New York after touring half of Europe, Da Ponte was the man behind Don Giovanni (which he also managed to stage in America). To find him old, trying to sell Petrarch poems in a New York City more interested in liquor (which he imported, by the way) is exciting. And it’s exciting to hear him talk about Salieri or Casanova.
Riondino narrates the episodes with affection and irony, and suggests, “Take the CD with you in the car and listen to it on the journey. It will amuse you and bring good luck.”
Between chapters, or in the background, listen to transcriptions of music by Mozart, Beethoven and others, or Gianni Possio’s pleasant musical tribute: performed by the Milano Classica Orchestra and Mario Carbotta’s flute and conducted by Massimiliano Caldi.
Playing News, July/August 2004
The Rugginenti publishing house presented in June in Milan the latest CD in the Audiobook series entitled “Da Ponte did … da ponte” inspired by the extraordinary memoirs of Mozart’s famous librettist. The text, acted by actor David Riondino, is complemented by music by Mozart and an unpublished concerto for flute and orchestra, written by Turin composer Gianni Possio in the 18th-century style. The soloist is Mario Carbotta, accompanied by the Milano Classica Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Massimiliano Caldi.
Lorenzo da Ponte is universally known as the librettist of Mozart’s three best-loved and most performed operas: Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovani and Così fan tutte. However, not many people know that the author’s life was no less adventurous than the events narrated in his plays. His verses offer an evocative glimpse into the traverses, intrigues and seductions that punctuated the poet’s life on his travels to Venice, Gorizia, Dresden, in the Vienna of Franz Joseph and Amadeus, and on to his American exile in New York, where Da Ponte worked to spread Italian culture and theater, always struggling with debt.
Carnet, November 2004 – Luciana Fusi
Episodes narrated with theatrical flair, suspense and irony evoke the protagonist and the extraordinary characters he frequented: Mozart and Salieri, Casanova to whom he contended for female conquests, crowned heads, famous artists. In the background a musical texture-Mozart, Beethoven, an unreleased by Gianni Possio-woven with finesse by Caldi and his instrumentalists.
Classic Voice, November 2004
While not a musical product in the strict sense of the term, one cannot fail to point out David Riondino’s CD, which recites excerpts–selected by himself–from Lorenzo Da Ponte’s autobiography, with brief musical interventions of Mozart’s own. In the manner of ancient theatrical interludes, the tempos of a concerto for flute and orchestra – specially written in the style of the time by Gianni Possio – separate the parts of the narrative, in which we find intact the elegant and brilliant language to which the three librettos for Mozart have accustomed us. The CD could be an irresistible stimulus to venture into the reading of these memoirs, ponderous in bulk but mild and very tasty, which a school less backward than ours would have long since welcomed into its curricula as a very high example of linguistic magisterium.
Amadeus, November 2004 – Paola Molfino
An audio book is a book that you listen to. Which can be, let’s face it, rather boring. Unless the story being told in it is not boring at all, the person telling it is good and does it gracefully and wittily, and maybe there is some good music to lay it all out. Then it happens that it can also turn into a little pleasure, as in the case from the audiobook “Da Ponte faceva … da ponte” with David Riondino. Excerpts from the Memoirs of Lorenzo Da Ponte, Mozart’s librettist, the libertine, the adventurer, the pioneer of overseas emigration, have been transformed into a performance that the Tuscan actor has taken to festivals and concert halls and has now arrived on CD with Mozart’s music and a composition “in style” by Gianni Possio performed by the Milano Classica Chamber Orchestra conducted by Massimiliano Caldi, with Mario Carbotta on flute. Something more than just reading and traveling through history.