Imagine, for a moment, Mozart walking down Broadway, in New York City. It’s not so easy. But Lorenzo da Ponte, who wrote the librettos for Mozart’s operas Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro, and Così fan tutte, died a New Yorker. That’s right. It’s an amazing story, and here are the bare bones, telegraph style: Da Ponte was born in Venice; Jewish, but converted to Catholicism, and became a priest; kicked out of Venice when he had two children with his mistress; wound up in Vienna; ran out of