Short answers, pulled from the story.
Da Ponte wrote libretti for 28 operas by 11 composers. His most celebrated works are the three Italian operas he wrote with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: The Marriage of Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787), and Cosi fan tutte (1790).
Da Ponte was tried in 1779 on charges of public concubinage and abduction of a respectable woman. The court found him guilty, and he was banished from Venice for fifteen years.
Da Ponte was appointed the first professor of Italian literature at Columbia College, a position he obtained through his friendship with Clement Clarke Moore. He was also the first Roman Catholic priest on the Columbia faculty and the first person in that role to have been raised as a Jew.
Da Ponte founded the Italian Opera House in 1833 at the age of eighty-four, siting it on the northwest corner of Leonard and Church Streets in New York City. It was described as the first purpose-built opera theater in the United States, but lasted only two seasons before debt forced the company to disband. It is recognized as a predecessor of both the New York Academy of Music and the Metropolitan Opera.
Da Ponte met Giacomo Casanova in Venice in 1777, and the two remained close friends for over twenty years. Both were described as Venetian adventurers and seducers. Casanova advised Da Ponte to go to London rather than Paris in 1792, and Da Ponte wrote about Casanova's imprisonment in the Piombi prison in his memoirs.
Da Ponte produced the first full performance of Don Giovanni in the United States in May 1826 in New York. Maria Garcia, who would soon become known as Malibran, sang the role of Zerlina.