To Hanako Shimoda, Luciano Pavarotti is a god. To her daughter, Emily, this fixation on Pavarotti is a harmless fantasy, the by-product of her mother's loneliness. Meeting Luciano is the story Emily tells about what happens when Hanako acts on her fantasy and invites opera star Luciano Pavarotti to a postperformance supper at their Westchester County home.

Emily has gone back after college to work at her old summer job - waiting tables at Gasho, the local Japanese steakhouse. Even worse than wearing Gasho's fake kimono and obi is living back at home with her mother. At first, Hanako seems pretty much her old self - still reliving her Japanese childhood; still affecting the airs of a European sophisticate, brewing espresso, singing scales in the shower and arias from Rigoletto over the fettucini Alfredo; still adoring Pavarotti, her idol.

But when it becomes clear that Hanako is renovating the entire house in preparation for the visit from Pavorotti, Emily is thrown into a wonderfully familiar quandary: how to deal with a parent who might be losing it.