En búsqueda de la existencia de un teatro sefardí en Italia: el caso de Mantua

As studied by Elena Romero, in Jewish culture the theatre is an “adopted” genre, it’s a literary mode that Jewish playwrights receive from European culture and “adapt” to their own identity. As demonstrated by Valentina Nider, in Italy the theatre related to the Sephardic and conversos’ groups has a strong connection with Spanish Golden Age Drama. With this paper, I’d like to examine the relation between Italy and the Sephardic and conversos’ theatre produced in the peninsula: the aim is to study the influence of the Italian context in Ladino literature and viceversa. To do so, I’ll analyse the case of the Duchy of Mantua; this geographical and historical criterion is justified by two main factors: first of all, because in Mantua existed the unique case of a truly Jewish-Italian theatre, approved by the Gonzaga, secondly because of the importance of this territory for the Sephardic diaspora. With the study of the Jewish theatre in Mantua, I’d like to underline those elements of continuity or discontinuity that the Sephardic group should have produced; finally, I’ll try to identify the process of resistance or rupture that the Jewish minority should have chosen in order to resist to the dominant paradigm of the Christian culture.