"CNN opera" meaning in All languages combined

See CNN opera on Wiktionary

Noun [English]

Forms: CNN operas [plural]
Etymology: From the suggestion that such operas are essentially just a report from news channel CNN in musical form. Coined by American opera critic Peter G. Davis in 1995. Etymology templates: {{coined|en|Q7174126|in=1995}} Coined by American opera critic Peter G. Davis in 1995 Head templates: {{en-noun}} CNN opera (plural CNN operas)
  1. (mildly derogatory) An opera about contemporary events. Wikipedia link: CNN, CNN opera Tags: derogatory, mildly
    Sense id: en-CNN_opera-en-noun-PH5ue1hL Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries, Musical genres, Opera

Inflected forms

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  "etymology_text": "From the suggestion that such operas are essentially just a report from news channel CNN in musical form. Coined by American opera critic Peter G. Davis in 1995.",
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          "ref": "[1995 April 10, Peter G. Davis, “Headline Muse”, in New York Magazine, page 52:",
          "text": "To understand the CNN opera, you have to go back to 1976, when the Robert Wilson/Philip Glass avant-garde extravaganza Einstein on the Beach — not a newsy opera, but a fact-based one — suddenly, surprisingly, filled the vast spaces of the Metropolitan Opera House[…]",
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          "ref": "[1997, Opera News:",
          "text": "What has been termed \"CNN Opera\" continues apace, probably on the theory that if operagoers can connect a work to history, they may either buy tickets to it or enjoy it more once in the theater.",
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          "ref": "2002, The New Music Connoisseur:",
          "text": "The leader sings lyrics like \"I'm the leader of the free-love world\" and \"I believe in women's rights – they all have the right to be loved by me.\" The taste of CNN opera pervades the text, to be sure.",
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          "ref": "2003, New York:",
          "text": "[The Death of Klinghoffer], the quintessential CNN opera, based on the 1985 hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro by Palestinian terrorists, created a mild stir among those who perceived it as insufficiently hard on terrorism and more than a bit unfriendly to Jews.",
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          "ref": "2013, Dominic Symonds, Pamela Karantonis, The Legacy of Opera.: Reading Music Theatre as Experience and Performance., Rodopi, →ISBN, page 25:",
          "text": "Several years ago, at the world congress of the International Federation for Theatre Research in Amsterdam (2002) I gave a presentation on CNN operas in the course of which I parenthetically mentioned the phenomenon of television opera.",
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-09-06 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-09-02 using wiktextract (ccec6f1 and 4deed51). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

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