Definition of Opera at BrainyQuote.com

Definition of Opera

Opera

A drama, either tragic or comic, of which music forms an essential part; a drama wholly or mostly sung, consisting of recitative, arials, choruses, duets, trios, etc., with orchestral accompaniment, preludes, and interludes, together with appropriate costumes, scenery, and action; a lyric drama.

The score of a musical drama, either written or in print; a play set to music.

The house where operas are exhibited.

of Opus

Related Definitions:

Accompaniment, Action, An, And, Appropriate, Are, Choruses, Comic, Consisting, Drama, Either, Essential, Exhibited, House, In, Lyric, Mostly, Music, Musical, Of, Opus, Or, Orchestral, Part, Play, Print, Recitative, Scenery, Score, Set, Sung, The, To, Together, Tragic, Where, Which, Wholly, With, Written

Opera Quotations

Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian.
H. L. Mencken

The opera is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.
H. L. Mencken

I wonder anybody does anything at Oxford but dream and remember, the place is so beautiful. One almost expects the people to sing instead of speaking. It is all like an opera.
William Butler Yeats

We're a very expensive group; we break a lot of rules. It's unheard of to combine opera with a rock theme, my dear .
Freddie Mercury

Advertising is a business of words, but advertising agencies are infested with men and women who cannot write. They cannot write advertisements, and they cannot write plans. They are helpless as deaf mutes on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera.
David Ogilvy

People are wrong when they say opera is not what it used to be. It is what it used to be. That is what's wrong with it.
Noel Coward

No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.
W. H. Auden

If time were the wicked sheriff in a horse opera, I'd pay for riding lessons and take his gun away.
W. H. Auden

Of all the noises known to man, opera is the most expensive.
Moliere

I really wanted to be an opera soprano.
Maureen O'Hara

Opera is where a guy gets stabbed in the back, and instead of dying, he sings.
Robert Burns

If you have to be in a soap opera try not to get the worst role.
Judy Garland

An operetta is simply a small and gay opera.
Gustav Mahler

When an opera star sings her head off, she usually improves her appearance.
Victor Borge

In no instance is there to be a musical or opera of Inherit the Wind because it doesn't sing. It's an intellectual play.
Jerome Lawrence

You can't do opera when already from the 10th row you can only see little dolls on the stage. In such an enormous space you can't put much faith in the personal presence of the individual singer, which is reflected in facial expressions, among other things.
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

And what unity is to be had, at a time when orchestras are dying out, and when opera houses are about to close their doors; what's going to come next - when nothing new in music, for the orchestra, is truly lasting: pieces are performed once, and then they're thrown away.
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

Going to the opera, like getting drunk, is a sin that carries its own punishment with it.
Hannah More

I have the absolute utmost respect for soap opera actors now. They work harder than any actor I know in any other medium. And they don't get very much approbation for it.
Joan Collins

I was the first movie star to plunge into night-time soap opera.
Dorothy Malone

A Librettist is a mere drudge in the world of opera.
Robertson Davies

If God drives a car, He'd drive a 1973 Ford LTD Brougham sedan with a claret-colored vinyl roof, with oxblood leather upholstery and an opera window.
Doug Coupland

The Opera is obviously the first draft of a fine spectacle; it suggests the idea of one.
Jean de la Bruyere

My horizon on humanity is enlarged by reading the writers of poems, seeing a painting, listening to some music, some opera, which has nothing at all to do with a volatile human condition or struggle or whatever. It enriches me as a human being.
Wole Soyinka

One of the most wonderful memories in my life was when I sang at the Opera House in Sydney. I will never forget that. It is one of the most beautiful Houses I have ever sung in my life.
Nana Mouskouri

It's very difficult to photograph an opera. And they messed up on it. It just wasn't there. And I don't blame the Gershwins for taking it away. Of course, if they had gotten the original company to have done it, it would have been very good.
Cab Calloway

An opera begins long before the curtain goes up and ends long after it has come down. It starts in my imagination, it becomes my life, and it stays part of my life long after I've left the opera house.
Maria Callas

I think it was just an opera. Now, you go to opera, you expect to see and hear what the opera is. So, it was Catfish Row. It was singers. Marvelous voices. It didn't make no difference what color they were.
Cab Calloway

What opera isn't violent? Two things happen, violence and love. And other than that, name something else. You can't.
Cab Calloway

Because, in opera, I have to sing for people that are very far from me, instead of, when I sing a song, I try to imagine to sing like in an ear of a child.
Andrea Bocelli

More Opera Quotations

Opera Translations

opera in Afrikaans is opera
opera in Dutch is opera
opera in Finnish is ooppera
opera in German is Oper
opera in Norwegian is opera

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