SO MUCH HAS been written about De’ Sommi that we may be faulted for thinking that he was the one and only theatre-maker among the Jews of Mantua. Indeed, it is easy to see how any other writer or theatre producer would remain in the shadows, eclipsed by the great light of this formidable playwright, impresario, and Jewish community leader. However, De’ Sommi was far from the only theatre producer in Mantua. In this chapter, I focus on another man, Shlumiel Basilea, who was famous enough to sustain the approbation and protection of the Gonzaga Dukes in the tumultuous period before and during the establishment of the Jewish Ghetto in Mantua in 1612. Basilea filled the vacuum left by De’ Sommi by forging another model for the Jewish theatre-maker: that of a performer/ producer and company leader. This model contrasted with De’ Sommi’s example of a writer who also produced and choreographed, but never performed. The distinction is important: Basilea’s reliance on his own reputation for virtuoso performances was much influenced by the model of the commedia dell’arte actors who made their fame as performers before becoming company leaders.

Basilea’s rise as an actor was a signal shift for the Jewish theatre-making enterprise and a pronounced example of intercultural influences from the commedia dell’arte affecting a Jewish artist. Basilea’s importance is even more evident if we accept, as I argue in this chapter, that Basilea— known by his stage name of “Shlumiel”— created a Jewish archetype, that of “the Schlemiel,” that would have a lasting impact and is still visible today. The etymological proximity of Shlumiel Basilea’s name to “schlemiel” leads me to associate this “character” actor with impersonation and imitation, the two acting modes that made him famous. While considering this “origin” of the “schlemiel,” I do not lose sight of Basilea’s likely inspiration— the giulliari/ jongleurs and Venetian buffoni— and, therefore, his debt to the Venetian and Northern Italian comic traditions.

Remarkably, Basilea was making theatre at a time of greater restrictions on Jewish– Christian relations, including the imposition of ghettos, which aimed to physically separate Jews and Christians. Basilea’s rise reflects the paradox that in a period of imposed cultural barriers, theatrical emulation, and borrowing nevertheless persisted between the Jews and Christians in Mantua. Even in the tumultuous post-1612 ghettoization period, with shifting rulers and more extravagant staging needs, Basilea’s career flourished.

On December 10, 1948, the United Nations created the first-ever declaration of human rights, adopted as Resolution 217. In it, article 27.1 define the arts as a human right. For the question of theatre-making by underrepresented groups in the early modern age, we have seen that theatre existed on an elastic and ever-expansive spectrum, including both celebration and exchange as well as burdensome taxation. Jews, but not only Jews, used theatre-making as a means of gaining access to audiences they otherwise could not have reached, participating in cultural spaces that increased their own human rights while bringing fame, recognition, and free entertainment to their patrons.

Simonsohn’s look back at research he conducted decades ago reflects a scholar in awe of an historic situation that was distinctive and surprising. He notes the surprising ability of such a small community to impact so much cultural production, as compared with similar communities of Jews living elsewhere. There was something powerful in the Jews of Mantuan Jew’s theatre-making efforts because they occurred in an area that was at the crux of so much artistic production and theatrical innovation. This subject compels a closer look, which is what I have attempted to do in this book.

The questions this book concerns itself with have to do with what happens when the Jew of Mantua, who is both of the Mantuan citizenry and not, performs, participating in representation.

Jewish Performances in Mantua

HOW DOES A performance tradition die? Often, we are so busy thinking about the new— the origins of something, its premiere— that we forget to consider its end. How does the performance tradition itself die out? What makes it finally stop, the energy and creativity thrusting into it now over? That is the question hovering over this chapter, which focuses on the moment in which the generative energies of the Jewish Mantuan community and the complex but ongoing exchange between it and the Gonzaga Christian community came to an end.

We know that theatre, which had once been a mainstay of the Jewish community in Mantua, no longer happened there after 1650— certainly not in the consistent way it had for 120 years. There were some aborted attempts to get it to restart it, but for all intents and purposes, the final performance in Mantua occurred in 1650. Why did it end at that point and in that year? What were the stakes for the ending? Was it a decision made by both parties— Jewish and Christian, artists and public? Was coercion involved?

In this chapter, I consider the circumstances that led to the ultimate cessation: the dying out of the powerful Guglielmo and Vincenzo father-son forces; successive waves of misfortune, such as a devastating plague; and then the horrific Mantuan War of Succession (1628– 1630) when the community was temporarily exiled in 1630 and performances had to stop. Upon returning to the devastated city, no one was able to support the kind of lavish spectacles that the Jews had put on since the early sixteenth century. Nonetheless, against these tremendous odds, by the time the Jewish population returned to a devastated Mantua in 1631, the Università had begun to re-group and then it staged its post-exile performances once again. Thus, not even the War of Succession was able to completely bring the performance tradition to a stop. If that is the case, then what did cause it to end? In this chapter, I trace the final decades of Jewish performance in Mantua. I look at various historical interpretations of the end of the performances and provide some additional theories as to why this important form of cultural exchange and currency was halted.

IN THE SUMMER of 1588, Leone de’ Sommi set off from his home in Mantua to Piedmont. The distance, which covers over 280 kilometers, was not simple to traverse, even in summer, due to the hilly, rugged terrain. The journey was less than comfortable, given the number of mosquitos that multiplied during spring and summer in the often-flooded agricultural lands between Lombardy and Piedmont. When he left his home, he did not know how long it would be until he would return to it. In fact, he would be gone for several weeks, and, while his journey ended in his safe return, it was not without its price.

The circumstances of De’ Sommi’s departure suggest the immense pressures that undergirded his extraordinary success, and so I begin the story of De’ Sommi near the end of his life, in June of 1588, as he made his way to Piedmont. Early summer of 1588 was a tense time for the Jews of Mantua. They had been asked to recite a play for the new Duke, Vincenzo, in honor of his birthday. Duke Vincenzo’s father, Guglielmo, had died the year before, and his son was a new ruler and very much an unknown quotient. For the Jewish community, much would be riding on their first production. Theatre functioned as an opportunity to impress the new Duke and secure his protection, a key to cementing a relationship between the Gonzaga and the Jewish population in general. Therefore, the Jewish community understandably approached preparations for the requested play with utmost seriousness, relying on the talents and organizational abilities of De’ Sommi.

With that in mind, De’ Sommi’s departure from Mantua in early summer is all the more surprising. Why would he ever want to leave Mantua at such a critical moment? The answer lies in the Turin state archives, in documents from a few years later, just after De’ Sommi had died, in 1592. These documents reveal De’ Sommi’s connection to a Piedmont Jewish resident called Moyse Melli (sometimes spelled Moisé Melli), an agento eletto (elected agent, otherwise known as a massaro) in the Piedmont Jewish community.

WHEN JEWS BEGAN producing theatre, they were doing more than just taking a hand in a Christian art form. Because Jews were not part of the guild system that created the materials— cloths, costumes, shoes, props, sets— of the performances, they had to take part in a performance tradition that had become an enterprise in which they had limited experience. In doing so, as we will see in this chapter, the Jews evolved their own way of thinking of theatre, as an industry, and of themselves as “contractors” of performances— increasingly professional laborers with self-developed skills and their own means of funding their training. Because the Jewish “contractors” predated the emergence of the professional, contracted Christian performers: the actors of the commedia dell’arte (whose work emerges in the 1540s), the Jewish theatre-makers of the late fifteenth century provided an early model for what professional theatrical performers might look like.

One figure stands out in the formulation of contractual work: a Jewish dance master who shouldered the responsibility not only of teaching dance at the highest courts of Northern Europe, but also of planning and producing some of the grandest celebrations, wedding dances, and performances of the period. Guglielmo Ebreo (William the Jew) was the genius who shined light and attention on the possibility that Jews could have a hand in performance-making. However, Guglielmo Ebreo alone cannot take credit for the impressive output that the Jews of Pesaro and other Northern Italian principalities created. After all, the productions this chapter will describe involved many participants and many performances. It would not be possible to attribute all this productivity to one man. Nor would it explain how the Jews, outside of the normal institutional structures of production (such as guilds), could organize themselves and gain the skills necessary to produce a performance. Starting in the late fifteenth century, a spark was lit in Jewish communities in Northern Italy, which set into motion a series of well-produced, high-level performances staged by the Jews that were to firmly establish Jewish theatre-making in Northern Italy for several generations to come.

The initial impetus for performance was begun in Pesaro, but as performance-making by Jews was taken up in Mantua, it became an increasingly communal enterprise with an ever-more systematic and sophisticated contractual apparatus.

IN HIS LETTER of appeal to Guglielmo Gonzaga, the Duke of Mantua, Leone de’ Sommi, the Jew (Leone de’ Sommi, Ebreo), acting as a spokesman for his community, described himself as living “under the happy shadow and secure protection” (sotto la felice ombra et sicura protettione). In Italian, De’ Sommi uses the word ombra, which translates today to mean both shade and shadow. In the sixteenth century, ómbra meant an obscured area of little light, which could also have been used in the sense of the interplay of shadow and light in a painting. Metaphorically, Jewish life in early modern Mantua meant living within a mixture of light and darkness, and finding umbrage— both shade in the positive sense, and shadow in the potentially negative sense— under the Gonzaga Dukes.

Who was Leone de’ Sommi? What did he mean when he said he was living under “the happy shadow” of the Duke? Why did a theatre-maker become the singular most important Jewish community member to negotiate the status of the Jews in Mantua at this time? Why would a place such as Mantua, which regularly played host to the most important professional theatre-makers, want to have the Jews making theatre alongside the Christians? Was there anything special about what the Jews could offer in their performances? And, at the heart of it all, in what ways did theatre become a basis for cultural exchange?

This book is about an extraordinary chapter of Jewish history and an equally compelling chapter of Italian–Jewish relations. It is about a 130-year-long tradition in Mantua in southern Lombardy, where the Jewish community staged an annual play in order to both placate and entertain the Gonzaga Dukes. In return, the Dukes made it possible for the Jews to live within Mantua and her dominions, the region known as the Mantovano, in relative security and safety. As Azariah de’ Rossi, another Jewish resident of Mantua, put it, in a period in which Jews were not wanted in most of Europe, Mantua was a “Kiriya Aliza” ( קריה עיזה , a happy city) for Jews, a safe haven and a creative mecca.

LOOMING ABOVE Dukes Guglielmo, Vincenzo, and Ferdinando’s reigns, and over the productive work by De’ Sommi and Basilea, was the Counter-Reformation. This Catholic resurgence, a response to the Protestant Reformation, began with the meetings of the Council of Trent, known in Latin as the Concilium Tridentinum (1545– 1563), and lasted until the end of the Thirty Years’ War (1648). The period had tremendous consequences for the Jewish community, ones that influenced every aspect of their lives: what they could read and publish, whom they could meet with and live next to, and how safe they felt. A time of increased restrictions and rules, this was also a period that recent scholars have recast as paradoxically both productive and collaborative, punctuated by high levels of Jewish-Christian dialogue. Evidence from performances at this time reveals a high degree of artistic exchange that took place, notably, in theatre-making. This productivity was nevertheless conditioned by the terms of the Counter-Reformation, and, therefore, while there was productive exchange, it was at times onerous. For example, the Jews undertook increasingly costly productions— which included a mechanism of self-taxation that became increasingly difficult for the community to bear.

Notwithstanding the burden that performance now represented, performance production in this period also “recast” the Jews’ role more broadly within the professional world of theatrical production, chiefly that of the commedia dell’arte. It was during this period that the Jews of Mantua evolved a unique way of using performance strategically as a type of currency— both cultural and actual— that could serve them especially well during. Part of that “currency” was the ability to serve as “contractors” for performance: ones who could create tremendous stage spectacles based on the know-how that would be passed down from generation to generation. Another asset that the Jews had was their ability to draw on their own intracommunal resources, including a stock of clothing that could serve as costumes and a variety of props (the costumes and stocks, collectively, were known in Italian as robbe) that were important in production. Indeed, in Mantua, the Jewish economy was founded on banking, the strazzaria, and goldsmithing and metal work.