All 5 Uses of
opera
in
Mrs. Warren's Profession
- The attempt to produce a genus of opera without music (and this absurdity is what our fashionable theatres have been driving at for a long time without knowing it) is far less hopeful than my own determination to accept problem as the normal materiel of the drama.†
Act Auth *
- In trying to produce the sensuous effects of opera, the fashionable drama has become so flaccid in its sentimentality, and the intellect of its frequenters so atrophied by disuse, that the reintroduction of problem, with its remorseless logic and iron framework of fact, inevitably produces at first an overwhelming impression of coldness and inhuman rationalism.†
Act Auth
- The vapidness of such drama as the pseudo-operatic plays contain lies in the fact that in them animal passion, sentimentally diluted, is shewn in conflict, not with real circumstances, but with a set of conventions and assumptions half of which do not exist off the stage, whilst the other half can either be evaded by a pretence of compliance or defied with complete impunity by any reasonably strong-minded person.†
Act Auth
- VIVIE [continuing]—to the Opera— PRAED [still more pleased] Good!†
Act 1
- I shouldn't enjoy trotting about the park to advertize my dressmaker and carriage builder, or being bored at the opera to shew off a shopwindowful of diamonds.†
Act 4
Definition:
-
(opera) a musical play with orchestra in which most dialogue is sung -- (typically associated with classical music and often in a language foreign to the audience)
or:
the art form (or describing something as related to it) that consists of musical plays with orchestra in which most dialogue is sung