The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte are some of the greatest works in the Western musical tradition, and did much to build the reputation of their composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. But the man who wrote their libretti, Lorenzo Da Ponte (1749–1838)—an Italian poet who spent the last years of his life teaching Italian at New York City’s Columbia University—was generally forgotten by non-experts. He was also born a Jew, as Robert Marshall writes:

Da Ponte himself was at pains throughout his life to hide his Jewish background. His Memoirs (first published in New York, in Italian, in 1823) begin with a fair warning on the first page. He declares, “I shall speak but little of my family, my neighborhood, my early years, as of matters . . . of scant moment to the reader.” . . . Neither here nor anywhere else in the Memoirs does Da Ponte name his parents or mention that they were Jewish.

It is not clear whether Mozart ever knew that Da Ponte was a converted Jew. The composer moved to Vienna in March 1781; Da Ponte arrived later that same year. The two apparently met for the first time in early 1783 at the home of Raimund Wetzlar (1752–1810), Mozart’s sometime landlord, one of his patrons, and the godfather of his firstborn son. In letters to his father, Mozart referred to Wetzlar variously as “the rich converted Jew,” “a rich Jew,” “an honest friend.”

One assumes that both Wetzlar and Da Ponte were aware that the other was a Jewish convert and that their shared background played a role in establishing their relationship, but that is not known for certain. A similar question arises regarding the relationship between Da Ponte and the [Austrian] emperor. Da Ponte claims in his memoirs that, from the beginning, he was a particular favorite of Joseph II—who had appointed him (instead of other ambitious aspirants) poet of the newly revived Italian court opera beginning with the April 1783 season. Just three months earlier, Joseph had issued an Edict of Tolerance. The Edict emancipated the Jews of Vienna and allowed them to practice their faith openly. Could it be that Joseph was aware of, or at least suspected, Da Ponte’s Jewish origins and that this fact had predisposed the enlightened despot in favor of the newly arrived and quite inexperienced poet?

Today, Prime Minister Netanyahu is expected to meet with President Trump in the White House. High on their agenda will be Iran, and the next steps following the joint assault on its nuclear facilities, as well as the latest proposal for a cease-fire in Gaza. But there are other equally weighty matters that the two leaders are apt to discuss. Eran Lerman, calling this a White House visit “unlike any before it,” surveys some of those matters, beginning with efforts to improve relations between Israel and the Arab states—above all Saudi Arabia:

[I]t is a safe bet that no White House signing ceremony is in the offing. A much more likely scenario would involve—if the language from Israel on the Palestinian future is sufficiently vague and does not preclude the option of (limited) statehood—a return to the pre-7 October 2023 pattern of economic ventures, open visits at the ministerial level, and a growing degree of discussion and mutual cooperation on regional issues such as Lebanon and Syria.

In fact, writes Lerman, those two countries will also be major conversation topics. The president and the prime minister are likely to broach as well the possible opening of relations between Jerusalem and Damascus, a goal that is

realistic in light of reconstruction needs of this devastated country, all the more destitute once the Assad clan’s main source of income, the massive production and export of [the drug] Captagon, has been cut off. Both Israel and Saudi Arabia want to see Syria focused on its domestic needs—and as much as possible, free from the powerful grip of Turkey. It remains to be seen whether the Trump administration, with its soft spot for Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, will do its part.