Essay Questions

What is the significance of the novel’s title?

The title is a reference to the centrality of music, Opera in particular, to the flow of the story and the interactions of the characters. The phrase Bel Canto in fact is an opera term that means beautiful singing and unsurprisingly the characters in the novel are either opera singers themselves or have their lives profoundly affected by music. The novel is inspired by events in the Lima Hostage Crisis during the 90’s.

What does Opera/Music symbolize in the novel?

Opera is a theatrical, highly-stylized art form that covers a wide spectrum of emotions and themes; often at their most passionate, most intense manifestations. A hostage situation, with all its action and drama, therefore is fair game for translating into an opera. Opera works as the in-novel parallelism of events that happen to the characters as they go through the hostage crisis. Each character goes through stages of fear and parallel to that negative spectrum of emotion, love.

How is the theme of hopes and dreams discussed in the novel?

The theme of hope and dreams are discussed through the characters in the novel. These characters, confronted with their own mortality, are prompted to carefully reevaluate their life choices; interestingly, rather than plot escape and/or revenge against their captors, the hostages and a handful of terrorists do manage to realize new aspirations, new hopes, and plot out a new direction for their lives. Some characters even fall deeply in love and some even unearth a completely new depth of care and affection for, oddly enough, their captors.