opera means A theatrical work, combining drama, music, song and sometimes dance. It carries an Arena rating of 1479, earned across 2 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, opera ranks #2,382 of 14,414 for Most Elegant Words, #4,788 of 14,297 for Words That Escaped Their Books, #7,082 of 14,423 for Most Sublime Words, #7,102 of 14,448 for Funniest Words.
opera is pronounced /ˈɒp.ə.ɹə/.
Why “opera” is a great word
A dramatic work in which a story is conveyed entirely through singing set to orchestral music, integrating vocal performance, acting, and often dance into a unified spectacle. From the Italian opera ("work, labor, composition"), from Latin opera, plural of opus ("work, effort"), first used in the modern musical sense in Italian in 1639. Unlike a "musical," with its punctuating spoken dialogue and popular idioms, or an "oratorio," a contemplative sacred concert performed without staging, opera demands an unbroken stream of sung text and the full apparatus of the theater. It is the velvet hush of a theater holding its breath before the first aria, the heat of stage lights on painted faces, and the visceral shock of a human voice, unaided, slicing through a symphony to convey fury or grief—an ephemeral cathedral of sound built, night after night, upon the most fragile of instruments.
Etymology
Borrowed from Italian opera. Doublet of oeuvre, opus, and ure.
noun
- A theatrical work, combining drama, music, song and sometimes dance.
- The score for such a work.
- The genre of such works, the art of composing operas.
- A building designed for the performance of such works; an opera house.
- A company dedicated to performing such works.
- Any showy, melodramatic or unrealistic production resembling an opera.
Words closest in meaning
By meaning, not spelling — each word's AI semantic fingerprint, nearest first.
- aria 84% match — A musical piece written typically for a solo voice with orchestral accompaniment in an opera or cantata. vs opera →
- masque 84% match — A dramatic performance, often performed at court as a royal entertainment, consisting of dancing, dialogue, pantomime and song. vs opera →
- cantata 83% match — A vocal composition accompanied by instruments and generally containing more than one movement, typical of 17th and 18th century Italian music. vs opera →
- recitativo 83% match — A recitative. vs opera →
- recitative 83% match — dialogue, in an opera etc, that, rather than being sung as an aria, is reproduced with the rhythms of normal speech, often with simple musical accompaniment or harpsichord continuo, serving to expound the plot. vs opera →
- gesamtkunstwerk 82% match — Total artwork; an artistic creation such as an operatic performance that encompasses music, theatre and the visual arts. vs opera →
- ballet 81% match — A classical form of dance. vs opera →
- oratorio 81% match — A musical composition, often based on a religious theme; similar to opera but with no costume, scenery or acting. vs opera →