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.