Mozart’s Librettists

Da Ponte, Schikaneder, Metastacio, and Other Text Writers of Mozart

Here is a list of Mozart’s librettists that serves as a great resource in referencing his operas.

The names of Lorenzo da Ponte and Schikaneder are often mentioned when operas of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart are discussed or talked about. It’s not surprising, for Schikaneder was librettist of Mozart’s famous Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute), and da Ponte wrote the texts of the other 3 acclaimed operas: Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro), Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte.

1. Ranieri de Calzabigi

• La finta giardiniera (The Phony Gardener or The Pretended Gardener), K.196. Opera Buffa (Comic Opera) in three acts – First version in Italian by Giuseppe Petrosellini. Second version in German Singspiel by Johann Franz Joseph Stierle. Based on libretto by Ranieri de Calzabigi.

2. Vittorio Amadeo Cigna-Santi

• Mitridate, Rè di Ponto, K.87, opera in three acts – based on the tragedy play by Jean Baptiste Racine’s Mithridate.

3. Marco Coltellini

• La Finta Semplice, (The Pretended Simpleton), K.51 (46a), Opera buffa in 3 acts – based on an early work by Carlo Goldoni.

4. Lorenzo da Ponte

• Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) – based on the French comedy by Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais

• Don Giovanni - after Giovanni Bertati’s libretto for Giuseppe Gazzaniga’s ‘The Stone Guest’, the contemporary version of the Don Juan legends.

• Così fan tutte, opera buffa (comic) in two acts

5. Giovanni di Gamerra

• Lucio Silla, K.135. Opera Seria (drama) in three acts

6. Pietro Metastasio

• La Betulia Liberata, K118 – Based on Somnium Scipionis by Cicero.
• Il Sogno di Scipione, (Scipio’s Dream), K.126, one-act opera – adapted by Gianbattista Varesco, Salzburg court chaplain, libretto / text by Pietro Metastasio.
• Il Rè Pastore (The Shepherd King), K.208, Opera Seria in two acts – libretto by Mazzola, after a drama by Metastasio.
• La Clemenza di Tito, (The Clemency of Titus), K.621, Italian, Opera Seria / Drama Opera in two acts

7. Giuseppe Parini

• Ascanio in Alba, K.111, Italian Pastoral opera in two acts – based on the play by Count Claudio Nicolo Stampa.

8. Johann Andreas Schachtner

• Zaide, K.344, opera in two acts. (Unfinished German opera) – after Franz Joseph Sebastiani’s Das Serail, written in 1780.

9. Emanuel Schikaneder

• Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute), opera in two acts

10. Johann Gottlieb Stephanie the Younger

• Der Schauspieldirektor, (The Impresario), K.486, one act opera comedy/singspiel
• The Abduction from the Seraglio, (Die Entführung aus dem Serail), K.384, an opera Singspiel in three acts – in German, adapted from an original libretto by Friedrich Breitzner’s “Belmonte and Constanze” (1782, Vienna).

11. Varesco (Giambattista, Gianbattista, Gerolamo Giovanni Battista)

• Idomeneo, Rè di Creta, K.366, Italian opera Seria/Drama – based on Antoine Danchet libretto for “Idoménée” by André Campra.
• L’Oca del Cairo, K.422

12. Friedrich Wilhelm Weiskern

• Bastien und Bastienne, (Bastien and Bastienne), K.50, one-act singspiel, a comic (buffa) opera – libretto in German by Weiskern, based on Marie Justine Benoite Favert’s parody of Jean Jacques Rousseau’s ‘Le Devin du Village’