Music for a Merchant – Sounds from Shylock’s Venice

On the occasion of the 500-year anniversary of the Establishment of the Venice Ghetto (1516-2016) and the 400-year anniversary of Shakespeare’s death (1616), the Italian Cultural Institute and the Embassy of Italy present Music for a Merchant: Sounds from Shylock’s Venice, a concert by Lucidarium Ensemble.

The concert will be introduced by Prof. Bernard Cooperman, Department of History, University of Maryland, and Maestro Ryan Brown, Opera Lafayette. 

Music for the Merchant is a project that attempts to recreate the ‘soundscape’ of Shylock’s world.  It combines the music he might have heard while wandering through the multicultural, vibrant and chaotic universe that was 16th century Venice.  Jews from across Italy, the rest of Europe and the Levant gathered in the three Ghetti (one for the German Jews, one for the Italians, and a third for the Spaniards) where a myriad of different languages (and different musical traditions) could be heard.  Even if restricted to overcrowded, oppressive quarters, unable to practice most professions, and subject to random arrest or forced conversion, the Jews of Venice left behind a creative output that is still impressive today.   Outside the Ghetto, Italians, Slavs, Greeks, Turks, Moors, and over a dozen other ethnic groups lived side-by-side and prospered, in a continuous flux of goods, money, ideas, spice, and stories about exotic, far-away places.

Lucidarium is a noted Renaissance music ensemble, known for its distinct sound, its musicological research and the use of original instruments. The concert will feature the singer and cantor Enrico Fink and a seldom performed repertoire in Italian, Hebrew, Yiddish and Spanish.

ENSEMBLE LUCIDARIUM:

Enrico Fink: voice and narration

Gloria Moretti, Anna Pia Capurso: voice

Avery Gosfield and Marco Ferrari: Renaissance wind instruments

Francis Biggi: plucked strings

Tina Chancey: viola da gamba

Massimiliano Dragoni: hammer dulcimer, percussion

Almost all of the pieces in this program have been reconstructed or transcribed by Ensemble Lucidarium and in “Music for a Merchant” will be performed for the first time since the 16^th century.

LOCATION
Embassy of Italy
3000 Whitehaven Street NW 
Washington, DC 20008