opera

An opera is a play in which every word is sung, with an orchestra. Go to the opera, an opera house, a comic opera.

The orchestra sits in a pit below the stage so the singers can be heard over it, and opera singers project without amplification, which is a physical skill nothing else quite matches. Surtitles have made the whole form far more accessible. Note operatic; soap opera, named for the detergent companies that sponsored the radio serials; and that the Italian opera means a work.