The Shylock Jinx

The Italian composer Giro Pinsuti experimented with the theme in his Mer-cante di Venezia in 1873. After that there was Deffes' Jessica (1898), Foerster's Jessika (1905), Alpaerts' Shylock (1913), and Hahn's Le Marchand de Venise (1935). The various operatic treatments of Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice have one quality in common: they have all but disappeared from the stage. Last week yet another Merchant had arrived--with a good chance of beating the old jinx. The composer: Italy's Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco.

Composer Castelnuovo-Tedesco, 66, one of the most prolific and successful of Italy's traditionalist composers, wrote his Merchant in competition for the "Campari Prize," awarded by the opera-loving manufacturers of that bitter Italian aperitif. Castelnuovo-Tedesco's winning entry shifted some of the play's action around, telescoped five acts into three, transformed some scenes into ballets, added Shakespeare's Sonnet No. 109 ("O! Never say that I was false of heart") for his third-act finale. Under Castelnuovo-Tedesco's streamlining, the evils of intolerance become the play's main theme. But Castelnuovo-Tedesco changed the sense of Shakespeare in only one respect: he omitted Shylock's conversion to Christianity on the theory that no man of the Jew's temperament would abandon his faith.

As performed at Florence's annual Maggio Musicale, The Merchant was a taut and impressive work. Composer Castelnuovo-Tedesco had so skillfully stitched music to text that every word rang with its original clarity. The opera, like much of Castelnuovo-Tedesco's work, was elegantly orchestrated, marked by sweeping vocal lines and shimmering lyric passages that echoed his admiration for Puccini. Although the Italian lines fell strangely on some ears ("Non ha un ebreo occhi?"--Hath not a Jew eyes?), the audience gave Castelnuovo-Tedesco's Merchant 15 echoing curtain calls.

Castelnuovo-Tedesco feels that in a way he is "contemporaneous" with Shylock, since "some of my ancestors were bankers in Florence when Shylock was a banker in Venice." A promising pianist, Castelnuovo-Tedesco studied composition under Ildebrando (Murder in the Cathedral) Pizzetti, built a successful prewar career, but in 1939 his music was banned by Mussolini. He fled with his family to California, where he composed movie scores, taught, and became a U.S. citizen. Although he still lives in Beverly Hills most of the time, he returns to Italy periodically, because "there is not much future in writing opera in the U.S."

From the beginning, Castelnuovo-Tedesco never had any doubt that his opera would win the Campari Prize and triumph over the jinx. "The Merchant is one of the least properly exploited of Shakespeare's plays," said he last week. And he added, paraphrasing his contemporary, Shylock: "I am content."

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