Encore! Encore!; Lorenzo Da Ponte was a hit in Europe: a courtier, a cad, the librettist for Mozart's finest operas. But the New World truly tested his creative powers

THE LIBRETTIST OF VENICE The Remarkable Life of Lorenzo Da Ponte, Mozart's Poet, Casanova's Friend, and Italian Opera's Impresario in America RODNEY BOLT BLOOMSBURY, $29.95 THERE SEEMED nothing remarkable about the Italian passenger who stepped off the packet boat Columbia as it docked in Philadelphia on June 4, 1805, except that he was tall and, for a man in his mid-50s, prematurely toothless...