CNN opera

English

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.

Noun

CNN opera (plural CNN operas)

1. (mildly derogatory) An opera about contemporary events.
   • [1995 April 10, Peter G. Davis, “Headline Muse”, in New York, New York, N.Y.: New York Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 52:

     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 […]]

   • [1997, Opera News:

     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.]

   • 2002, The New Music Connoisseur:

     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.

   • 2003, New York:

     [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.

   • 2013, Dominic Symonds, Pamela Karantonis, The Legacy of Opera.: Reading Music Theatre as Experience and Performance., Rodopi, →ISBN, page 25:

     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.