All 5 Uses
opera
in
Mrs. Warren's Profession
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- 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 *opera = a musical play with orchestra in which most of the dialogue is sung (or the art form that consists of such musicals; or describing something as related to that art form)
- 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 Authoperatic = relating to classical music plays in which most of the dialogue is sung
- VIVIE [continuing]—to the Opera— PRAED [still more pleased] Good!†
Act 1opera = a musical play with orchestra in which most of the dialogue is sung (or the art form that consists of such musicals; or describing something as related to that art form)
- 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
Definitions:
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(1)
(opera) a form of musical theater with orchestra in which most of the words are sung, often in a classical style and sometimes in a foreign language
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(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) Less commonly, the expression, soap opera, refers to a television or radio program that typically runs for many years and dramatizes the lives of a group of characters.