In 1805, a 56-year-old Italian man of letters immigrated to America.

Now, there wasn’t much call for Italian men of letters in America in those days, so over the next twenty years, in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York, he was, by turns, a grocer, distiller, seller of patent medicines, and owner of a dry goods shop. Eventually he was offered an honorary–that is to say unsalaried–position as Professor of Italian at Columbia University.

In 1825, a troupe of Italian opera singers visited New York, and our Italian professor friend attended their performances. He introduced himself to the head of the troupe, the famous singer, Manuel Garcia, who was astonished to learn the elderly Italian gentleman was none other than Lorenzo da Ponte, the librettist of Mozart’s operas, “The Marriage of Figaro,” “Cosi fan tutte,” and “Don Giovanni.”

And so it came about, that on today’s date in 1826, that the American premiere of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” was given in New York City, with Garcia in the title role, in the presence of the man who had penned the opera’s libretto almost forty years earlier, a 77-year-old American citizen named Lorenzo da Ponte.

Wolfgang Mozart (1756 – 1791) arr. Triebensee Don Giovanni Suite Amadeus Ensemble; Julius Rudel, cond. MusicMasters 67118