Bel Canto: A Novel Opera or An Acoustic Novel

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Bel Canto A Novel Opera or An Acoustic Novel

• 1. Bel Canto Novelised
• 2. Rusalka Intertext
• 3. Tragic Opera Structure
• 4. Renee Fleming

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1. Bel Canto Novelised
Textual Sound Effects

• Through the windows, bright red strobe lights
  flashed across the walls accompanied by a
  high-pitched wailing. The sound was nagging and
  accusatory. It was nothing, nothing like song
  (27).
• All night long the outside world bellowed.
  Cars skidded and sped. Sirens arrived, departed,
  flicked off and on again . . . . Voices,
  exaggerated and mangled through the bullhorns
  amplification, shouted instructions towards the
  street, made demands towards the house. They
  would settle for nothing short of unqualified,
  immediate surrender (29-30).
• Gen nodded. He would never refute the beauty
  of her singing, the warm and liquid quality of
  her voice that so well matched the watery
  Rusalka (164).

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1. Bel Canto Novelised
Roxane Coss Song Personified

• The terrorists continued to block the doors and
  carry guns, but now Roxane Coss was in charge
  (162).
•  
• Soon enough the days were divided into three
  states the anticipation of her singing, the
  pleasure of her singing, and the reflection on
  her singing (164).
• The constant screech of bullhorned messages
  would stop as soon as she opened her mouth to
  sing, and after a few days the bullhorn did not
  come back at all (164).

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1. Bel Canto Novelised
Bel Canto as Theme

• They spoke to one another by handing leaves of
  music back and forth (162-3).
•  
• They were all at the piano, Roxane Coss and
  Mr. Hosokawa and Gen Simon Thibault and the
  priest and the Vice President and Oscar Mendoza
  and little Ishmael and Beatriz and Carmen, who
  left her gun in the kitchen and came and stood
  with the rest. All of the Russians were there,
  and the Germans who had spoken of a revolt, and
  the Italians, who were weeping, and the two
  Greeks who were older than the rest of them
  (128).

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2. Rusalka Intertext

• The first thing she sang that morning was the
  aria from Rusalka . . . . How she loved that
  story, the spirit of the water who longs to be a
  woman who can hold her lover in real arms instead
  of cool waves (163).

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2. Rusalka Intertext
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3. Tragic Opera Structure

• When I was watching all of this unfold on the
  news
• . . ., I thought this is so operatic what's
  happening in Lima. The only thing that's missing
  from this story is an opera star hung up with the
  rest of these people, which is the nice thing
  about being a novelist instead of a journalist.
  When you see a story that is crying out for an
  opera singer, you just stick an opera singer into
  the story.
• Interview with Ann Patchett, 2002

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3. Tragic Opera Structure
Long, drawn out deaths
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4. Renée Fleming