Verdi's Final Drama?

[TheAsh]

We know that Daniel Handler is a HUGE fan of Giuseppe Verdi.  The Masked Ball is directly parodied from Verdi's opera of the same name, and Gustav and Madame Lulu seem to be influenced from that opera as well. And obviously, La Forza Del Destino plays a huge role in TPP. Lemony describing the vast conspiracy in TEE seems to be taken from a Verdi opera as well (I seem to remmber this from a Google search, but I can't seem to find it now.) There are other aspects that seem to be stolen from Verdi as well: Verdi was a big believer in poisons, like VFD, and aspects of ASOUE's story seem to be stolen from Luisa Miller, which is the Verdi Opera where poison plays the most prominent role. Interestingly, Luisa Miller seems to have inspired the titles Count Olaf and Duchess R. Daniel Handler even wrote a movie based on Verdi's Rigoletto!

That said, is there anymore Verdi references I missed, and has anyone tried solving the Sugar Bowl mystery with reference to opera? The whole story of Lemony, Beatrice, and bertrand seems to be written in an operatic style, with conspiracies and love triangles. I suspect the sugar bowl contains some sort of poison (more on that in a different post) and the backstory of ASOUE can be solved with reference to a Verdi opera.

[Optimism is my Phil-osophy]

It actually makes a lot of sense to me. There is a mystery that I have not been able to solve involving poison, and it is registered in TBB the Rare Edition. Furthermore, Kit and Dewey's words in TPP indicate that the content of the SB is somewhat deadly, and if the villains get their hands on it we would have a scenario almost as bad as if they get their hands on the deadly MM fungus. According to Esmé's words, the content of the SB was sought in a type of mission in which many people died. Perhaps the death was caused by the poison itself. In addition, Esme stated that it was necessary to find a beautiful and safe container to store the contents. The safety part may have to do with the fact that the content is a poison. By associating this with what you said, a pattern is formed that is difficult to deny. And of course, if you need to kill someone, just have tea with them. But that's why the volunteers would never put sugar in the tea ... They are avoiding dying. Was that the theme of Lemony Snicket's next book? But the question is, why is this specific poison so important? Would he be undetectable? Or would it be able to proliferate?

[Dante]

I'd be cautious about ascribing too much of ASoUE's plot to Verdi; you're describing some incredibly broad plot devices, many of which have as much their roots in the early gothic fiction of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century - which Handler has avowed as an influence, particularly Ann Radcliffe, whose The Mysteries of Udolpho is a very obvious influence on TBB.

[Optimism is my Phil-osophy]

Ash, please be happy with Dante's comment. He only recommended caution before accepting it as canonical, which is always good advice. But he didn't comment on anything that could really contradict your conclusion. In other words, the hypothesis is plausible. I believe that your hypothesis is the best so far, when it comes to concrete options of what may be in the SB. I would say that the whistle option is the most fun, but the poison option is the most realistic.