Lorenzo Da Ponte (1749-1838)
Sunbury, Northumberland County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Mozart's librettist in the 1780s for "The Marriage of Figaro," "Don Giovanni," and "Cosi fan tutte" came to America in 1805 and lived in Sunbury from June 1811 to August 1818. Da Ponte wrote that on visiting Sunbury, the adopted home of his wife's family, "I grew so enamored of the town that I resolved to settle there." A teacher, distiller, and merchant, he lived at the southwest corner of Third and Market Streets.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Lorenzo Da Ponte had already lived an extraordinary life as Mozart's librettist — writing the words for The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte — before he emigrated to America in 1805. From 1811 to 1818 he made his home in Sunbury, his wife's family's town, working as a teacher, distiller, and merchant, and declaring himself so taken with the place that he resolved to settle there.
Why it matters
That a man who shaped the greatest operas of the age spent years as a small-town Pennsylvania shopkeeper is a striking emblem of the American immigrant story and of how Old World culture took root in the young republic.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Lorenzo Da Ponte
- · Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Joseph Priestley House
Northumberland, PA · est. 1963
From 1794 to 1804 this house on the Susquehanna was home to Joseph Priestley, the English clergyman and chemist celebrated for isolating oxygen and other gases. A political and religious radical, Priestley fled England after mobs burned his home for his sympathies with the American and French revolutions, and he rebuilt his life and laboratory in the new republic. Here in Northumberland he continued his experiments and helped seed a scientific tradition in his adopted country.
Joseph Priestley
Point Township, PA · est. 1947
The English chemist and Unitarian theologian Joseph Priestley, celebrated for isolating oxygen, made his home in Northumberland from 1794 to 1804 after leaving England. His riverside house and laboratory, now preserved as a memorial and museum, became a base for his scientific inquiry and dissenting faith during his final decade in America.
Joseph Priestley
Northumberland, PA · est. 1947
Fleeing political and religious persecution in England, the chemist and Unitarian thinker Joseph Priestley settled in Northumberland from 1794 to 1804 and built a home and laboratory beside the river. Famous as an early isolator of oxygen, he spent his American years continuing his scientific and theological work in this quiet Susquehanna town, which now preserves the site as a museum.
Simon Snyder
Selinsgrove, PA · est. 1947
In the young republic's early decades, Selinsgrove sent one of its own to the highest office in Pennsylvania. Simon Snyder rose from the General Assembly to serve three terms as governor from 1808 to 1817, the first man of German descent to hold the post in a commonwealth shaped heavily by its German-speaking communities. The home he built here in the early 1800s remained his residence until his death, and he was laid to rest in the nearby Lutheran churchyard.