The opera that Jamal and Salim see a bit of from under the bleachers at the Taj Mahal is Christoph Willibald Gluck's "Orfeo ed Euridice," which is based on the Greek myth in which Orpheus, distraught at his wife Euridice's death, travels all the way to the Underworld in an attempt to retrieve her.
Jamal's lifelong quest to rescue Latika from the various "underworld" figures who have control of her is an echo of this myth.
Furthermore, the first singer to perform the role of Orpheus (in 1762) was a castrato, which means that while he was a little boy, he had been castrated so as to allow him to continue hitting the higher notes that boy singers can reach before they undergo puberty and their voices drop.
The film's subplot in which children are kidnapped by Maman and mutilated so that they will be more lucrative beggars and street singers is an echo of this opera's history.
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