When authors refer to other great works, people, and events, it’s usually not accidental. Put on your super-sleuth hat and figure out why.
Literary and Philosophical References
Giuseppe Verdi, Rigoletto (1.8-9, 2.101-102)
Rigoletto is the first opera Mr. Hosokawa ever went to, the one where he fell in love with opera on his eleventh birthday (1.8-9), as we find out in Chapter 1. The lead female role, Gilda, is what Roxane Coss is supposed to be singing next after Mr. Hosokawa's birthday party, and he happily imagines her going off to do it when he thinks she'll be set free with all the other women in the house (2.101-102). Wishful thinking.
It's no surprise that it's also (drum roll) a symbolic choice of opera. It's an opera about different kinds of love, especially parental and romantic love. It's also an opera in which love ends in tragedy for most of the main characters. Do we see some foreshadowing here? Duzzies. Mr. Hosokawa is about to fall madly in love, and it's going to end tragically for him, just like for the characters in Rigoletto.
A quick tour of Rigoletto itself: Rigoletto, the main male character of the opera, is a jester who deeply loves his innocent daughter Gilda and wants to protect her from his boss, the Duke of Mantua, a guy who, well, wants to sleep with any woman whom he considers to be reasonably good-looking (that would be a lot of women, as the opera unfolds).
Because it's opera, of course the Duke is trying to seduce Gilda by visiting her in disguise. Rather unfortunately, she's actually in love with him, though she thinks he's a poor student, not a corrupt Duke. Also because it's opera, lots of complicated disguises and confusions ensue.
The upshot is that Rigoletto pays an assassin to kill the Duke, and Gilda walks into a trap on purpose to save the Duke from dying, even though by that time she knows he's an unfaithful liar. The assassin gives the body to Rigoletto to convince him that it's the dead Duke, and Rigoletto realizes that it's actually his mortally wounded daughter. He despairs, and the opera ends. (Oh right—spoiler alert.) Anyway, that's where love will get you in opera. Yes, opera is seriously disturbing.
Basically, for the purposes of Bel Canto, what matters is that love is intense and crazy and dangerous, especially in a place and time that's already dangerous. Love makes your life dramatically richer and more full of feeling, but it's probably going to kill you. That's all too accurate a description of what happens when Mr. Hosokawa falls in love with Roxane in similarly dramatic circumstances.
Antonin Dvořak, Rusalka (1.15-16, 6.7-9)
Rusalka is like The Little Mermaid, except with more of the dark tragedy and not so many of the cute calypso-singing crabs. The opera comes up at two key moments in Bel Canto. One is the opening, where we find out it's the center of Roxane's repertoire and also the piece she'd just finished when the lights went out.
The other is when Roxane first starts singing regularly again partway through the book. The first thing she sings is an aria from Rusalka, and Patchett tells us that Roxane loves the opera's story about "the spirit of the water who longs to be a woman who can hold her lover in real arms instead of cool waves" (6.7).
Rusalka is a tragic fairy tale, the story of a water spirit who falls for a human prince. Basically, the water spirit Rusalka agrees to a bargain a lot like Ariel's, but possibly even worse: she can become human and try to get the prince to fall in love with her, but if it doesn't work he'll be eternally cursed and she'll become a will o' the wisp.
What's so bad about being a will o' the wisp? It's a kind of lake spirit that lures human beings to their deaths (sort of like the beings in the dead marshes in The Lord of the Rings). She also won't be able to go back to her family.
Surprisingly, Rusalka says yes to this deal. As the plot unfolds, guess what? The prince does end up betraying her. Rusalka is despondent and yep, she becomes a lonely will o' the wisp, just as predicted.
The Prince changes his mind and comes to say he wants to be with her, but because he blew it the first time, he'll die if he so much as kisses Rusalka. He decides to do it anyway, and they share one kiss. Bye-bye, Prince.
He may be eternally damned, and she goes back to her lonely life as a will o' the wisp, while her father says that all sacrifices are futile. Rusalka prays and hopes that maybe God will have mercy on the prince's soul, but it doesn't seem clear whether that will happen or not. Not really your standard Disney ending there.
So why is this opera a good fit for Bel Canto? Well, it's a combination of beautiful music and tragic circumstances, which is also true of Bel Canto (and, like, 87.5% of opera, period). But also, like Rigoletto, it's a story in which passionate love leads to what the rest of the world would consider horrible misery and despair. And yet, there's that brief moment at the end where the lovers share a passionate kiss, even knowing that love has undone them. Maybe that moment of shared love is actually worth it to them? Apparently so.
Mr. Hosokawa doesn't know it yet when he requests that Roxane Coss sing an aria from Rusalka, but the story will prove to be all too apt for them. Sure, they don't betray each other, but their romance is going to be intense, passionate—and brief. Like Rusalka, it's also going to end with the man dying in a moment of sacrifice and the woman living on and trying to make some sense of what she's lost.
Giacomo Puccini, "O Mio Babbino Caro," from the opera Gianni Schicci (6.187)
Tired of all that doom and gloom? Here's a funnier opera reference for ya. By funnier, we mean that the short comic opera Gianni Schicci is about a bunch of greedy relatives and a clever but unprincipled guy who helps them keep a dead man's money from going where he willed it (which happens to be to a bunch of monks). So, maybe not exactly happy or ethical, but hey—most of the characters don't die, and the young lovers are happy in the end. That's about as upbeat as opera gets, folks.
Roxane Coss sings this aria at a crucial moment. She's managed to arrange having a box of sheet music brought into the house, and she desperately wants to sing. But the Generals are threatening not to let it through. She dives into a showy performance of "O Mio Babbino Caro" and threatens not to sing another note unless they let the box in. Remarkably, she gets away with this bit of musical blackmail, and they let her have the music.
So why is "O Mio Babbino Caro" the perfect thing to sing here?
In the opera, the famous aria is sung by a young woman named Lauretta to persuade her father Gianni Schicci to help her fiancé inherit enough money that they can get married. (You guessed it: "O Mio Babbino Caro" means "O My Beloved Father." It's like the "Papa Don't Preach" of opera.)
Anyway, the dead guy who left all his money to the monks was a relative of her fiancé, and they could get married if only some of that money somehow found its way to the fiancé.
Lauretta knows her father is pretty clever about these things, but he doesn't want to help because the fiancé's other family members have insulted him (they're basically snobs, and Lauretta's dad isn't from the same social class. Burn).
Lauretta, in a classic example of a relatively innocent child manipulating the heck out of a doting parent, sings "O Mio Babbino Caro." She really lays it on thick, building up to the point where she threatens to throw herself in the river if she can't marry her fiancé.
Check out this translation if you don't believe us. Or listen to a recording of the aria, like this one by the famous opera star Renee Fleming. You don't need to be an opera fan or even a musician to hear the over-the-top, super-sweet harp and strings backup, or the way the singer's voice slides around in a classic "Oh-please-Daddy-can-I?" kind of way. We bet Lauretta never had any trouble getting permission to go to parties as a teenager.
Unsurprisingly, it works, and after lots of tricky skullduggery by her father, Lauretta and her fiancé are happily off to the wedding.
In this moment of Bel Canto, Roxane wants something similarly large and improbable, and she uses similar methods to pull it off. The Generals could easily block her access to music and don't really want to let her have it, but using music and strength of personality, she persuades them. Looks like opera will get you far, at least in Bel Canto.
Historical References
Saint Rose of Lima
Saint Rose is the patron saint of South America in Catholic belief, so she's a logical saint for Carmen to pray to in tough moments. She lived in Lima, unsurprisingly, which is also the place where the real incident Bel Canto is based on happened.
Pop Culture References
This book isn't so keen on the pop culture references. There is an imaginary soap opera that President Masuda and several of the terrorists are addicted to, but that's about it. And you can't exactly call opera "pop."