On a recent afternoon in Geneva, stagehands prepared the Protestant meeting hall on the Place de la Fusterie for a musical, “The Calvin Generation,” to be performed there that evening. Springtime for Calvin?

Not quite. The religious reformer, best known for his doctrines about a depraved humanity and a harsh God predestining people to hell or heaven, would not dance or sing that night. But the show was one of a vast program of commemorations — theater, a film festival, conferences, exhibits, even specially concocted Calvinist wines and chocolates — described by some who have tasted them as somewhat bitter — of the birth of John Calvin 500 years ago.

“Our idea was to show Calvin so that people could see his personality in the richness of his thought and activities,” said Roland Benz, 66, the Calvin Jubilee chairman, as he watched workers preparing the stage, lights and costumes.

The musical is meant to resolve a quandary about Calvin, who was born Jean Cauvin in northern France in 1509 but forged his career in Geneva, where he migrated to escape Roman Catholic persecution back home. Though Calvin struck the roots of an incessant striving that fueled the city’s early capitalist economy, if he is remembered at all by Genevans it is as something of a dreary snoop who imposed on the city an unbendingly prudish morality that some say survives to this day in somewhat muted form.

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