Bel Canto Characters

Roxane the Performer Roxane Coss is a fictional opera superstar, and that means she's pretty much the person all of Bel Canto revolves around. On top of that, her character carries all the symbolic...

Mild-mannered electronics firm CEO by day, super opera fan by night! Okay, so a passionate devotion to opera may not count as a superpower. But if it did, Mr. Hosokawa would be up there with Batman...

Sorry, not Ken Watanabe. No Last Samurai or Inception here. But Gen Watanabe does have the communications equivalent of awesome warrior skills. He's a translator, which means he's the only person a...

Carmen's character is all about discovery and exploration, and the tragic way things can end if circumstances are stacked against you. Don't start getting paranoid and thinking the glass is half em...

Messner's an awfully competent dude, but he's been dealt a bad hand in this situation. Like, not as bad as the people living as hostages—but only until the terrorists and hostages become buddies...

Ruben's an awfully nice guy. He also happens to be the vice president of the unnamed South American country where Bel Canto is set. That means the whole thing happens in his very own mansion. Sure,...

Whatever your views on organized religion, it's hard not to like Father Arguedas. He's young, smart, and brave, and he works hard to take care of other people (2.105). He refuses to leave the hosta...

Simon is the French ambassador to the host country. Edith is his elegant wife. They've been married for 25 years. They didn't want to go to the host country in the first place: they were hoping for...

Victor Fyodorov is Secretary of Commerce in Russia, but that's not what matters most to him (7.126). What matters most to him is that he loves beauty. Though Fyodorov can't sing an aria or paint li...

For terrorists, Generals Alfredo, Hector, and Benjamin don't seem to be such awful guys. Especially Benjamin, who seems the most reasonable of the group, just as Messner says (5.32). Don't get us w...

Cesar is one of the young terrorists. He could also be the next Justin Timberlake of opera. Just instead of getting started in a boy band, it's with a group of terrorists.So where does his stellar...

This is the guy who starts the book with the words "Call me Ishmael," and then gets sucked into a white-whale chase. Wait. Different Ishmael. So this Ishmael's story is similar to Cesar's, but in a...

The other young terrorists aren't fleshed out in quite as much detail, but we get the sense that mostly, they're teenagers who signed up for a cause. It sounds like many of them had very little mon...