music drama


noun
  1. an opera having more or less continuous musical and dramatic activity without arias, recitatives, or ensembles.

Origin of music drama

1
First recorded in 1875–80

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

How to use music drama in a sentence

  • "Washington," the new American music-drama, was given for the second time, with the same cast as before.

    Bizarre | Lawton Mackall
  • All the essays on music and on drama and on the music-drama are as much an expression of himself as his music-dramas.

    Richard Wagner | John F. Runciman
  • The opening chapter, which gives the famous picture of the Heath, is like an overture to a great music-drama.

    Essays on Modern Novelists | William Lyon Phelps
  • This unpretentious spot of Italian soil was to prove the cradle of the revolutioniser of Italy's national music-drama.

    Verdi: Man and Musician | Frederick James Crowest
  • The new music drama, combining as it does principles from all the arts is all-demanding of its interpreters.

    The Merry-Go-Round | Carl Van Vechten

British Dictionary definitions for music drama

music drama

noun
  1. an opera in which the musical and dramatic elements are of equal importance and strongly interfused

  2. the genre of such operas

Origin of music drama

1
C19: translation of German Musikdrama, coined by Wagner to describe his later operas

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