Lorenzo Da Ponte

Dear visitor, I was an intellectual best known as a librettist of Mozart’s operas. I came to Gorizia in 1779 after being banished from the Republic of Venice. Here I was accused of "public concubinage" and "kidnapping a respectable woman", accusation aggravated for being ordained priest just six years earlier. I resided in Gorizia, at that time an Austrian city, and immediately fell in love with it. When I was called to Dresden as a court poet in 1781, in fact, I left my second homeland with great sorrow: "All that night I did nothing but cry at the thought of having to leave a city (Gorizia), where I was treated so well by all the good people and where I came to value myself. "