“It was during that performance of Rigoletto that opera imprinted itself on Katsumi Hosokawa, a message written on the pink undersides of his eyelids that he read to himself while he slept.
Many years later, when everything was business, when he worked harder than anyone in a country whose values are structured on hard work, he believed that life, true life, was something that was stored in music.
True life was kept safe in the lines of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin while you went out into the world and met the obligations required of you. Certainly he knew (though he did not completely understand) that opera wasn’t for everyone, but for everyone he hoped there was something”
For Katsumi Hosokawa it’s opera. What is it for you?
Excerpt taken from Bel Canto by Ann Patchett.
