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Bel Canto
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Bel Canto (2001) (edit title/settings)

by Ann Patchett (Author) (edit contributors)

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Description edit see section history

Somewhere in South America, at the home of the country's vice president, a lavish birthday party is being held in honor of the powerful businessman Mr. Hosokawa. Roxanne Coss, opera's most revered soprano, has mesmerized the international guests with her singing. It is a perfect evening --... read more

Summary edit see section history

Opera diva Roxanne Coss has come to a small Latin American country to perform at the birthday party of Katsumi Hosokawa, the head of a major Japanese electronics company. Officials of this Latin American company have wooed Hosokawa to the home of the country’s vice president with the promise... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)

Opera diva Roxanne Coss has come to a small Latin American country to perform at the birthday party of Katsumi Hosokawa, the head of a major Japanese electronics company. Officials of this Latin American company have wooed Hosokawa to the home of the country’s vice president with the promise of Coss’s performance. They hope that their hospitality will prompt Hosokawa to agree to build a factory in the country. But Hosokawa has no interest in building a factory. He has only come because he loves opera and loves Coss’s voice.


As soon as Coss has finished her last song, all of the lights go out in the vice president’s home. A band of terrorists rush into the living room, where the guests are assembled, and demand that the president of the country come forward. It turns out that the president is not at the party; he has stayed home to watch a popular soap opera on television. Thwarted in their original intentions and lacking a fallback plan, the terrorists begin a standoff with the government.

The next day, a representative from the Red Cross, Joachim Messner, arrives to act as a negotiator between the terrorists and the government. The terrorists agree that in return for supplies they will release the workers, the sick, and the women. The only woman they refuse to give up is Roxanne Coss. When Coss’s accompanist realizes that Coss has been detained, he insists on staying with her, although he is terribly ill. A diabetic, he soon dies from lack of insulin.

During the next four months, life takes surprising turns for the better. The hostages realize that aside from the three generals in charge, all of the terrorists are children or young teenagers. The hostages begin to act parental with the young terrorists. They also discover that two of the terrorists are girls. Because the hostages and terrorists speak many different languages, they rely on Gen Watanabe, Hosokawa’s translator, to translate for them. He is kept very busy translating various conversations.

After a few weeks, Coss decides she needs to practice singing. It turns out that one of the hostages, a hardworking executive in Hosokawa’s company, is an excellent pianist. He and Coss begin to practice together every day. The beauty of Coss’s singing makes the hostages and terrorists feel almost lucky to be trapped.

As the weeks and months stretch on, most of the hostages and the terrorists begin to enjoy their lives. Two love affairs blossom. One is between Hosokawa and Coss, and another is between Watanabe, Hosokawa’s translator, and one of the female terrorists, Carmen. This second love affair begins when Carmen asks Watanabe to teach her how to read and write. Watanabe agrees and meets Carmen in secret at night in a china closet. No one else knows about their lessons or their love. Other close relationships form: General Benjamin, the leader of the terrorists, begins to play chess with Hosokawa, and the vice president of the country, Ruben Iglesias, becomes increasingly fond of Ishmael, one of the young terrorists. Iglesias even envisions adopting him.


After several months, a persistent fog lifts. One morning, Cesar, one of the young terrorists, starts to sing. Everyone is amazed at how gifted he is. Coss begins to give him singing lessons. Around the same time, the generals begin to allow the hostages outside to enjoy the yard. There they run around, play soccer, and garden.

A French ambassador, Simon Thibault, is deeply in love with his wife and longs for the hostage crisis to end. He is the only one who feels this way. The rest of the hostages and the terrorists grow happier and happier. They no longer fear one another. They fear what will happen when their captivity ends.

Messner, the Red Cross representative, continues to be the sole outsider to visit the mansion. He, too, grows fond of the terrorists. The terrorists try to forget about what will happen to them in the end, but Messner tries to convince them to surrender. He tells them repeatedly that there is no other hope, but they refuse to listen, since they know that surrendering will mean imprisonment and, most likely, death. After four months have passed, government troops storm the mansion and kill all the terrorists, including Carmen. By accident, they kill Hosokawa, who is trying to protect Carmen from the soldiers’ bullets.

The novel ends with an epilogue in which Coss and Watanabe marry.

Characters edit see section history

  • Katsumi Hosokawa: The founder and chairman of Nansei, a major Japanese electronics firm, opera lover and guest of honor, hostage
  • Roxane Coss: American lyric soprano opera singer from Chicago. Hostage.
  • Gen Watanabe: Hosokawa's multi-lingual interpreter from Nagano, Japan. Hostage, becomes kind of like a secretary for the Generals, starts to teach others different languages
  • Carmen: a young and beautiful terrorist, was first thought to be a boy but then it was discovered that she was one of two female terrorists
  • Ruben Iglesias: Vice President of the host country, owner of the house, hostage, very hospitable even after everyone is kept hostage
  • Joachim Messner: International Red Cross negotiator from Switzerland.
  • Ishmael Iglesias: smallest, youngest terrorist, the Vice President especially likes him, takes up chess by just watching it played
  • Simon Thibault: French Ambassador, gourmet, hostage, married to Edith Thibault
  • Beatriz: The other female terrorist in the group
  • General Benjamin: He is one of the Generals, terrorist who suffers with shingles. His younger brother, Luis, in in jail on political charges. Benjamin is a former schoolteacher.
  • The Slavic lover: Having lived in Russia for two years of my life, I fell in love with this entirely Slavic character. His monologue regarding his appropriateness to love was classic! The circular way in which he built a long story was totally in character with St. Petersburg intellegencia manners.
  • Father Arguedas: Twenty-six year old third-tier parish priest in the group. While kept hostage, he did masses, confessions, and last rites. He chose to remain with the hostages even though he could have been freed with the women and workders.
  • Cesar: One of the terrorists. He has a beatiful voice. Receives voice lessons from Roxanne Coss.
  • General Alfredo: One of the generals. Missing his first and second fingers on his left hand.
  • Tetsuya Kato: Senior Vice President of Nansei. Gifted piano player, takes over as accompanist for Roxanne Coss after her other one dies, hostage
  • Eduardo Masuda: President of the host country, the terrorists originally only wanted to capture him but he wasn't at the party
  • General Hector: One of the Generals, terrorist
  • Edith Thibault: Simon's wife
  • Manuel Flores: Father Arguedas' friend, can get you any piece of sheet music you want
  • Gilbert: One of the larger boy captors.
  • Rosa Iglesias: Ruben Iglesias' daughter.
  • Maria: Add a description of this character.
  • Marco Iglesias: Ruben Iglesias' son.
  • Monsignor Rolland
  • Oscar Mendoza: One of the hostages. He is a contractor that lives in the city of which the incident happens.
  • Luis
  • Yegor Ledbed
  • Kiyomi Hosokawa: A Japanese businessman who loves opera and is celebrating his birthday, hostage
  • Akira Yamamoto: Director of project development at Nansei.
  • Satoshi Ogawa: Vice President of Sumitomo Bank.
  • Yoshiki Aoi: Vice President of the Bank of Japan.
  • Victor Fyodorov
  • Francisco: One of the larger boy captors.
  • Esmerelda: Governess employed to look after the Iglesias children.
  • Dr. Gomez: Hospital administrator, former pulmonologist.
  • Imelda Iglesias: Ruben Iglesias' daughter.
  • Bishop Romero: One of the initial hostages. He gets released with the women and workers.
  • Ana Loya: Favourite cousin of Ruben Iglesias' wife. Friend to Father Arguedas.
  • Humberto
  • Paco
  • Sergio
  • Mrs. Hosokawa
  • Lothar Falken
  • Jacques Maitessier
  • Milou
  • Guadalupe
  • Pietro Genovese
  • Ranato
  • Julian
  • Saint Rose
  • Esmeralda
  • Dimitri
  • Mr. Berezovsky
Show all 53 characters
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Quotes edit see section history

  • “Carmen prayed hard. She prayed while standing near the priest in hopes it would give her request extra credibility. What she prayed for was nothing. She prayed that God would look on them and see the beauty of their existence and leave them alone.”
  • “There was such an incredible logic to kissing, such a metal-to-magnet pull between two people that it was a wonder that they found the strength to prevent themselves from succumbing every second. Rightfully, the world should be a whirlpool of kissing into which we sank and never found the strength to rise up again.”
  • “If someone loves you for what you can do then it's flattering, but why do you love them? If someone loves you for who you are then they have to know you, which means you have to know them.”
    Roxanne
  • “He doesn’t know to want for more because nothing in his life has been as much as this...on that night he thinks that no one has ever had so much and only later will he know he should have asked for more.”
  • “They were so taken with the beauty of her voice that they wanted to cover her mouth with their mouth, drink in.”
    In speaking about Roxane Coss's singing.
  • “. . . and the air was sugared with promise”
    In describing the effect Mr. Hosokawa's visit has on the community
  • “They were early, but other people were earlier, as part of the luxury that came with the ticket price was the right to sit quietly in this beautiful place and wait.”
  • “"Ah, Mr. Hosokawa," Roxane said. "Imprisonment would be something else altogether without you."”

First Sentence edit see section history

When the lights went off the accompanist kissed her.

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

  • Passion in the Face of Death: In Bel Canto, the proximity of death and suffering makes people love more passionately. We learn that Hosokawa’s love for opera grew in part from his hard life in post–World War II Japan. Simon and Edith Thibault renew their love for each other in what they call a “godforsaken country.” Most centrally, the hostages and the terrorists grow to love one another in the face of death and danger. The characters in Bel Canto must live for the moment, since their situation is uncertain and death could come at any time. They find that under these circumstances, they crave love and friendship. The first time Watanabe and Carmen kiss, they do not make great plans for their future; they talk about the likelihood that they will be separated. The specter of death also sharpens the characters’ appreciation of beauty and art. The first time Kato plays the piano, he plays “the love and loneliness that each of them felt, that no one had brought himself to speak of.” Coss sings “as if she were trying to save the lives of everyone in the room.”Patchett suggests that the drone of daily life makes it hard to live passionately. In order to get through the days, people put aside thoughts of loss, vulnerability, and death. They behave calmly and conventionally, and mute the desire to live and love with intensity. In Paris, a city of elegant women, Thibault saw his wife as just one of many elegant women. In Japan, Hosokawa spent most of his day fulfilling his duties as businessman, husband, and father. He shoehorned his passion into the little time he devoted to opera. It takes a hostage crisis to teach the characters in Bel Canto to live and love fully.
  • The Strangeness of Fate: In the world of Bel Canto, fate exists, and people are at the mercy of destinies they can’t control. In the fifth chapter of the novel, we learn that Father Arguedas is “only just beginning to see the full extent to which it was his destiny to follow, to walk blindly into fates he could never understand.” Like Arguedas, Watanabe marvels at the strangeness of fate. It seems almost impossible that he, a highly educated and well-traveled professional from Japan, would meet Carmen, a terrorist from a remote village in Latin America. But not only do Watanabe and Carmen meet, they fall in love. Watanabe often thinks about how strange it is that they should have found each other. Thibault, similarly, is amazed by the unexpected twists in his marriage. First he rediscovers his love for his wife, and then he loses her company after being taken captive.
  • The Basic Human Impulse Toward Civilization: Many novels explore humans’ base impulses toward violence and power. Novels like The Lord of the Flies suggest that our darkest impulses lurk just beneath the surface and will spring out if given the chance. In Bel Canto, Patchett suggests just the opposite: that our strongest impulses are not barbaric, but civilizing. At the beginning of the novel, the characters are caught up in daily struggles for fame, for money, for power. But once captivity removes these struggles, people gravitate toward art and culture. The hostages and the terrorists read, sing, learn languages, cook, watch TV, play chess, play sports, garden, and fall in love.
  • Opera: Opera suffuses Bel Canto, the title of which comes from opera and means “beautiful song.” Roxanne Coss sings, Tetsuya Kato accompanies her, and a star is born in the person of Cesar, who has an angelic voice. Opera connects the characters in the novel, giving them a source of joy during their captivity. The novel borrows its structure from operas, which typically feature beautiful scenes and songs and end in tragedy. Like operas, Bel Canto is about an idyllic world eventually shattered by death.
  • Language Barriers: On a literal level, the characters in Bel Canto speak different languages. Without Watanabe’s interpreting skills, they are helpless to communicate with one another. The characters’ awareness that language separates them intensifies their desire to communicate, and Watanabe is in constant demand.On a more abstract level, the characters have difficulty talking to one another simply because language is a flawed means of communication. When we try to put an idea into words, we are acting as Watanabe does—translating our feelings and thoughts into language. But translations are never perfect, and we can never communicate precisely what we mean through language.
  • Secret Passions: Many characters in Bel Canto hide their passions. For most of his life, Kato hides his talent for playing the piano from everybody but his family. Hosokawa does not take pains to conceal his love for the opera, but he does not talk about the opera or about why it moves him. Watanabe and Carmen literally hide their love, meeting secretly in a china closet. Hosokawa and Coss also keep their love private.
  • The Vice President’s Mansion: Every moment of Bel Canto takes place in the vice president’s mansion, which becomes symbolic of a hidden, private world. Fog settles around the mansion, cutting it off from the outside, and no one but Joachim Messner can come and go. The mansion becomes a cocoon in which characters focus on their own thoughts and feelings and on their love for the people around them, undistracted by the busy outside world.
  • The Soap Opera: Art connects people by expressing shared feelings of love and loss. High art like opera functions this way, and so does low art like soap operas. In Bel Canto, soaps symbolize art’s powers of unification. The president of the country misses the party to watch a soap opera that the entire country is also watching. In a lyrical scene, Patchett describes the way the soap transfixes everyone from young terrorists to the president. By watching the soap, the country experiences emotions and catharsis as a unified group.
  • Rusalka: The opera Rusalka symbolizes the fear that deep love will end in terrible suffering. Rusalka, which is the centerpiece of Coss’s repertoire, is about a water goddess who wants to love a human prince. She has a witch give her human form, but the transformation comes with a curse: when her human lover is untrue, her embrace becomes deadly. The goddess’s lover repents for straying and begs for her love. At the end of the opera, the goddess and the lover embrace, knowing that that embrace will kill the lover.
  • Child Terrorists: The child terrorists who take over the vice president’s mansion symbolize the danger that accompanies every sweet part of life: innocence, love, joy. The child terrorists play games, wonder at the world, and long for the affection of the adults around them. But they wear uniforms, wield guns, and hold their hostages for months. Their innocence isn’t pure, just as love isn’t perfect, and joy isn’t lasting.

Series & Lists edit see section history

This book is in Amazon Book Club Picks. (authoritative list)
This book is in The Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge. (community list)
This book is in Book Lover's Cook Book, The. (authoritative list)

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Ann Patchett (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: HarperCollins
Country: United States
Publication Date: 2001
ISBN: 0060188731
Page Count: 336

Classification edit see section history

Books That Cite This Book edit see section history

   
  • Shiver

Books Cited by This Book edit see section history

   
  • One Hundred Years of Solitude

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