<Li> Reynaldo Hahn's three - act French opera Le marchand de Venise was first performed at the Paris Opéra on 25 March 1935 . </Li> <Li> The late André Tchaikowsky's (1935--1982) opera The Merchant of Venice premiered at the Bregenz Festival on 18 July 2013 . </Li> <P> The play contains the earliest known use of the phrase "with bated breath" (by Shylock, in Act I, Scene 3, "Shall I bend low and, in a bondman's key, / With bated breath and whisp'ring humbleness, / Say this ..."), which has come into common use to convey the idea of restraining one's breathing in anticipation or supplicance (in which the archaic "bated" is often misidentified as "baited" in modern usage). </P> <P> Arnold Wesker's play The Merchant tells the same story from Shylock's point of view . In this retelling, Shylock and Antonio are fast friends bound by a mutual love of books and culture and a disdain for the crass anti-Semitism of the Christian community's laws . They make the bond in defiant mockery of the Christian establishment, never anticipating that the bond might become forfeit . When it does, the play argues, Shylock must carry through on the letter of the law or jeopardise the scant legal security of the entire Jewish community . He is, therefore, quite as grateful as Antonio when Portia, as in Shakespeare's play, shows the legal way out . The play received its American premiere on 16 November 1977 at New York's Plymouth Theatre, with Joseph Leon as Shylock and Marian Seldes as Shylock's sister Rivka . This production had a challenging history in previews on the road, culminating (after the first night out of town in Philadelphia on 8 September 1977) with the death of the larger - than - life Broadway star Zero Mostel, who was initially cast as Shylock . The play's author, Arnold Wesker, wrote a book chronicling the out - of - town tribulations that beset the play and Zero's death called The Birth of Shylock and the Death of Zero Mostel . </P>

Summary of the story the merchant of venice