Beschreibung
Dated: Dux, 2 March 1789, (reply received 9 March 1789). 3 pages in 4to. Writing 4 months before the outbreak of the French Revolution from his home at Dux in Bohemia, Casanova warmly thanks an aristocratic benefactor for his letter of 14 February, addressing him as Excellenza mio adorato Padrone (Excellency my adored master) Your gentle and generous heart dictates to your happy pen everything that can be read in your writing, by which you can only notice sentiments of truth and of virtue … May God repay you for the kindness you have shown me, and preserve your good health for a long time … as for the advantage of your illustrious family and also to give me, in case of need, new token of your grace and of your protection . He refers to Collalto s sad news that prince Karl von Li[e] chtenstein(1) was dying, …but it was also welcomed because over here he was thought dead, and [instead] as long as there is breath there is hope ; Casanova comments on social events …Now the Carnival is over and so are the balls and the nice court assemblies, to which Your Excellency deservingly took part … A correspondent of mine from Venice tells me that the Doge(2) is dying, and that according to the public opinion the ducal horn will be appointed to His Excellency the Procurator Memmo (3) , but the same [correspondent] also tells me that he has no money, and that he is quarrelling with the Martinenghis, who claim from him 145.000 ducati for works carried out in the palace at S. Marmola which he gave as a dowry to his daughter… I am told that in Vienna the Venetian minister will be a patrician with a noble title, but I do not know who he will be. The last paragraph contains an extended reference to [Lorenzo] da Ponte, Mozart s librettist : I was told that the Italian music was dismissed. I am wondering if the abbé da Ponte4 will stay. He doesn t write to me anymore. He is angry with me because I didn t praise his poems. He who flatters is not a friend… (1) Karl Joseph Prince of Liechtenstein (1730-89) , Austrian general; (2) Doge Paolo Renier (1779-89) was actually succeeded by Ludovico Manin (1789-97), the last doge; (3) Andrea Memmo (1729-93) Proculator of St Mark s, architectural theorist, was in financial difficulties when he left his palace to his daughter as a dowry to the Martinenghi family; (4) Lorenzo da Ponte (1749-1838), born as Emanuele Conigliano, a converted Venetian Jew, was a gifted opera librettist, poet and priest, who wrote the libretti for Mozart s three most famous operas :Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro & Cosi fan tutte; he made his career as librettist to the Italian opera in Vienna under the patronage of the Emperor Joseph II, but lost his post under the new Emperor Leopold; he had met Casanova in October 1787; both men had been expelled from Venice and had a tempestuous relationship (da Ponte was critical of Casanova in his memoirs); after a spell in London, da Ponte emigrated to New York, where he produced the first full performance of Don Giovanni, and founded the New York Opera Company in 1836, the predecessor of the New York Metropolitan Opera House. Traces of ink oxidization throughout, otherwise in very good condition. Autograph letters by Casanova of this length and interest are rarely offered for sale. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers ABE-1524137232103
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