"Of course it is," Dr. Lecter says. "If a book is really popular nowadays, it gets turned into a movie, or two, or three; in that time, it was operas. Neither the movies nor the stage musicals of our time can quite live up to the level of enthusiasm people had about opera. Nowadays, it's still very lovely and deeply emotional, but a cured fur curled up pleasantly when compared to the live cat opera used to be from the late 18th to early 20th century."