music drama

noun
1.
an opera having more or less continuous musical and dramatic activity without arias, recitatives, or ensembles.
Compare number opera.
Origin
1875-80
Examples from the web for music drama
  • To support the commission and development of a music drama work.
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
Word Origin
C19: translation of German Musikdrama, coined by Wagner to describe his later operas
Encyclopedia Article for music drama

type of serious musical theatre, first advanced by Richard Wagner in his book Oper und Drama (1850-51; "Opera and Drama"), that was originally referred to as simply "drama." (Wagner himself never used the term music drama, which was later used by his successors and by critics and scholars.) This new type of work was intended as a return to the Greek drama as Wagner understood it-the public expression of national human aspirations in symbolic form by enacting racial myths and using music for the full expression of the dramatic action. Wagner's emphasis on opera as drama merely resumed and developed the ideas of Claudio Monteverdi and Christoph Gluck. He envisaged the disappearance of the old type of opera, with its libretto provided by a hack versifier, as an opportunity for the composer to make a "set piece" opera out of purely musical forms separated by a recitative.

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