Presents the original text of Shakespeare's play side by side with a modern version, discusses the author and the theater of his time, and provides quizzes and other study activities.

Scholars and stage directors the world over have searched for clues to Shakespeare's true feelings toward Shylock. Was The Merchant of Venice intended to comment on mistreatment of the Jewish people? Was the Bard simply pandering to the anti-Semitism of the day? Or is there a more nuanced answer, found not through textual analysis but by giving the play breath and movement and therefore the most honest reading of its soul one can hope for? This program...

When Iago falsely tells Othello that his wife Desdemona is cheating on him, Othello kills her and then commits suicide upon learning the truth.

In Venice on holiday, composer Gustav Aschenbach encounters a young Polish boy and becomes obsessed with him, a secret passion that will lead to his doom.

Brunetti is a police inspector with a keen mind, razor-sharp wit and a touch of melancholy. In fact, his is probably the most melacholic expression in all of Venice. He strives to bring criminals to justice, but experience has taught him that countless things work against that, human frailty, corruption and police incompetence being chief among them. It may be a Sisyphean task but the impossibility galvanizes his resolve to tackle head-on the ominous...

A fastidious composer reeling from a disastrous concert, Gustav von Aschenbach (Dirk Bogarde) travels to Venice to recover. There, he is struck by a vision of pure beauty in the form of a young boy named Tadzio (Björn Andrésen), his infatuation developing into an obsession even as rumors of a plague spread through the city. Based on the novella by Thomas Mann, this late masterpiece from Luchino Visconti is a meditation on the nature of art, the...