burletta

American  

[ber-let-uh] / bərˈlɛt ə /

noun

Theater.

1. (in the 18th and 19th centuries) a musical drama containing rhymed lyrics and resembling comic opera or a comic play containing songs.

---

Etymology

Origin of burletta

1740–50; < Italian, equivalent to burl ( a ) jest ( see burlesque) + -etta -ette

Example Sentences

Suppose me, for once, a burletta projector, Who attempts a mock musical scrap of a lecture.

From A Lecture On Heads As Delivered By Mr. Charles Lee Lewes, To Which Is Added, An Essay On Satire, With Forty-Seven Heads By Nesbit, From Designs By Thurston, 1812 by Thurston, Katherine Cecil

This burletta helps to develop the plan which it is the intention of the “council” to follow up in their agonising efforts to resuscitate the expiring drama.

From Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, September 12, 1841 by Various

Oliver Twist: a serio-comic burletta, in three acts.

From Life of Charles Dickens by Marzials, Frank T. (Frank Thomas)

We move ourselves—they are moved by wires; but we do just the same things—we are life and we are art, in the burletta we are both.

From The Little Schoolmaster Mark A Spiritual Romance by Shorthouse, J. H.

What were then called the "burletta houses" were permitted performances of dancing, singing, tumbling, juggling—anything, indeed, but speech unaccompanied by music.

From A Book of the Play Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character by Cook, Dutton