In this chapter, the author attempts to address the following questions: first, how do the creative architects of opera make sense of tourism. Second, what do they see in tourism that is both reflective specifically of the twentieth-century era and yet enduringly human, providing a point of connection with the audience. Third, how might the creative output of these artists and intellectuals conform to, or challenge, the collective understandings of the tourism academy. The multiple effects of an earthquake and tsunami in Japan have recently provided evidence of the impacts natural disaster and technological failure may have upon the ontological order of tourism. The political and ideological forces behind emigration, often the basis for subsequent reversed patterns of tourism flows, are represented in the Les Oiseaux de Passage. Within the academy of tourism studies it is highly unusual to find any dialogue about these enduring elements of human existence.