Lorenzo Da Ponte in Sunbury

In the seventeen eighties, Lorenzo Da Ponte was the most sought-after librettist in Vienna, writing the words to three of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's greatest operas, including The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Cosi fan tutte. But Da Ponte's turbulent life eventually brought him across the Atlantic, and in eighteen eleven he settled in this small Pennsylvania town of Sunbury, living here for seven years.

He came to love it. Da Ponte later wrote that on visiting Sunbury he grew so enamored of the town that he resolved to settle there. He worked as a teacher, a merchant, and even a distiller while here. He eventually moved to New York, where he became the first professor of Italian literature at Columbia College and helped establish Italian opera in America. He died in New York in eighteen thirty-eight at the age of eighty-nine.