operetta
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of operetta
1760–70; < Italian, diminutive of opera opera 1
Vocabulary lists containing operetta
Theater - High School
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List 7
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
These mid-century dream teams revolutionized American theater by popularizing the integrated musical, a form which leveraged classic operetta elements like song and dance as narrative tools.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 27, 2026
By 1934, Lubitsch had left Paramount for MGM, where he directed one last musical with Chevalier and MacDonald, a loose but fizzy adaptation of Franz Lehár’s operetta “The Merry Widow.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 18, 2026
The singer sported a Union Jack jester's hat for the traditional performance of Rule, Britannia! and blew kisses to the audience while singing Ruperto Chapí's tongue-twisting comic operetta Las Hijas Del Zebedeo.
From BBC ● Sep. 14, 2024
This winter, young actors and dancers from the Dnipro Academic Opera and Ballet Theater performed “Sorochinsky Fair,” an operetta based on a story by the Ukrainian writer Nikolai Gogol.
From New York Times ● May 5, 2023
Still, in the silence of the night, when the city lost its stage-set normality and operetta peace, she was besieged by the agonizing thoughts she had repressed during the day.
From "The House of the Spirits: A Novel" by Isabel Allende
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
