Camp Music Video TTTO V'Ahavta (Yeshiva Boys Choir)

Yeshiva Boys Camp Music Video

chevra lcha living a lie

Yehsiva Boy in Israel and London

Lorenzo Da Ponte the famed 18th Century librettist who authored three of Mozart’s operas; Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni and Cosi van Tutte; was born Emanuele Conegliano in the Jewish Ghetto of Ceneda now Vittoria Veneto in Italy. He converted to Catholicism when he was fourteen and took the name of the Bishop who baptized him. I was surprised to discover that the brilliant lyricist of Mozart's most famous operas can be traced back to the Ceneda Ghetto Cheder. He was ordained as a priest at the age of 21 and moved to Venice to teach and write. After being put in cherem; excommunicated and kicked out of Venice for publishing a poem deemed to liberal he travelled to Vienna where he became court poet for Emperor Joseph II. Da Ponte and Mozart met face to face at a soiree thrown by Baron Raimund Wetzlar von Plankenstern another converted Jew In his later years he married the daughter of another Jewish convert, Nancy Krahl. Together they had six kids and eventually left Europe for New York where after a brief stint as a bookseller during which time he met Clement Mark Moore, author of "T’was the night before Christmas!” he became the first professor of Italian at Columbia University. Lorenzo Da Ponte was the first Jew and first ordained Catholic Priest to teach at Columbia University. The establishment of Opera in the USA; owes much to this Yeshiva Boy from Ceneda. He persuaded his friends and pupils to support the building of the Italian Opera House in New York. Some say that Mozart would not have been Mozart without Da Ponte. Chance encounter perhaps. Or maybe it was Bashert. Destiny prevailed to bring the Yeshiva Boy from Venice to Vienna and New York. Three of Opera’s greatest works can all be traced back to the Yeshiva Boy from the ghetto of Venice.