Da Ponte

Mozart and his librettist, Lorenzo Da Ponte, meant to make us squirm as they uncover our insecurities and the faults in our materialistic facades.

The censors of Emperor Joseph II, an enlightened despot, approved the libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte only after he and Mozart removed all explicit political references that came from the play, including a climactic speech inveighing against the privileged nobility.

Anthony Holden, a polymathic and prolific British author, journalist and poker player who found accidental fame as a royal biographer and critic of the monarchy, but who was happier writing books about Shakespeare, Laurence Olivier and Lorenzo Da Ponte, Mozart’s librettist, died on Oct.

In that second category fall Mozart’s three collaborations with the librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte — “Le Nozze di Figaro,” “Don Giovanni” and “Così Fan Tutte” — works of slippery psychology, frank humanity and, crucially, crystalline construction that punishes any mistake onstage or in the orchestra pit.

Gray has gone further in his attempted conventional faithfulness to Mozart’s score, and the goings on in Lorenzo Da Ponte’s libretto, more than any respectable modern opera director would dare.