Dukes and Mobsters – Episode 8



We are back this week with a brand new episode designed to transport you to yet another time and place, this time 16th Century Mantua, Italy. Joe explores the rough lawmakers of the time, in particular the Duke of Mantua, through commentary on a glorious recording of Verdi’s “Rigoletto.” We then move to a more modern telling of Italian-American history, and take a look at another tough bunch, the Corleone family of Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather.” Through some film clips and a couple of pieces of Nino Rota’s indelible score, Joe will draw parallels between the monarchs of hundreds of years ago and the mobsters of the 1940s.