Enclosed\u00a0by\u00a0tall tenements and the arched windows of 16th-century synagogues, audiences \u2014 U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg among them \u2014 gathered to see six sold-out performances of \u201cThe Merchant\u00a0in<\/em>\u00a0Venice,\u201d\u00a0a production of the Compagnia de\u2019 Colombari theatre company and Venice\u2019s Ca\u2019 Foscari University. The six performances were part of a year-long commemoration\u00a0marking the\u00a0500th anniversary of the imposition of the Ghetto.<\/a><\/p>\n The performances also marked\u00a0the 400th\u00a0anniversary of Shakespeare\u2019s death.<\/p>\n The play, a mock retrial of the play\u2019s Jewish villain, Shylock, and scores of other exhibits, conferences, concerts and other initiatives of\u00a0the 500th anniversary program aim\u00a0to reckon with the Shylock\u00a0story and provide perspective to the actual Jewish experience in Venice \u2014\u00a0past, present and future.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is important that people recognize that Jews are a part of Venetian society \u2014\u00a0that it wasn\u2019t just the Ghetto,\u201d said historian Donatella Calabi, who curated a major exhibition called \u201cVenice, the Jews, and Europe: 1516-2016\u201d at the Doge\u2019s Palace, one of the city\u2019s main landmarks.<\/p>\n The exhibit at the Doge\u2019s Palace, a centerpiece of the anniversary year, includes art, artifacts, documents and interactive installations that explore both the segregation of Jews in the ghetto, as well as the rich cultural and other exchanges between Jews and non-Jews that took place even during the period.<\/p>\n \u201cWe show the long history of Jews in Venice,\u201d said Calabi.<\/p>\n In the\u00a0\u201cMerchant\u201d production, five different actors, including one woman, played Shylock. The idea, the play\u2019s dramaturge, Walter Valeri, explained in the program notes, was to \u201cmake him slip out of his single, unique skin to underscore how each one of us is indeed Shylock.\u201d\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n The audience saw Shylock seek revenge after his daughter Jessica stole his jewels and eloped with a Christian, Lorenzo. They saw him thwarted in his demand for a pound of flesh from the merchant Antonio, who defaults on a loan. And they saw him defeated, his property seized, condemned to convert to Christianity.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t expect to be so engaged,\u201d Grammy award-winning Frank London, who composed and performed the music for the production, told JTA. \u201cI\u2019m surprised at my personal reaction at the heavy invective in the play thrown against Jews\u2026 the total dehumanization of Jews.\u201d<\/p>\n In the play, he said, \u201cthere is no criticism of anti-Semitism. They are all anti-Semites, they don\u2019t give a damn; it\u2019s the world they live in. They don\u2019t care.\u201d<\/p>\n Shakespeare never visited Italy and probably never met a Jew. And yet, over the\u00a0centuries, the fictional Shylock has arguably become the most famous, and notorious, Venetian Jew of all times, overshadowing real history and real personalities.<\/p>\n
![\"Share](\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\")