17th Mar 2010

What is the difference between an opera and a musical?

  • A musical is a play where both spoken dialogue and singing/songs are used to further the story along. Traditionally, most musicals are comical, though there are many that have serious themes. Musicals are a much newer idea than opera, and are generally much more light-hearted and humorous

    Opera, however, uses nothing but singing to convey the story. The script is flowing and poetic, just as lyrics to a song. When listening to opera, there will be full company songs, but any dialogue that would normally be spoken by one character at a time is sung. Today there are many operas written in English and many great operas have been translated to English to widen the prospective audiences. However, the beginnings of opera date back to the ancient Greeks, and the beginnings of modern opera happened in Europe before English was prominent, so most great operas are traditionally in foreign languages. Operas are usually very dramatic and, while offering bits of comic relief, have rather serious story lines.


  • the key difference is in Opera all of the words are sung. In musicals you can have talking dialog between songs.


  • Musicals are theatre live presentations created to entertain thru combination of a dramatic script, acting, and spoken dialogue
    with music,singing, and dancing and with scenery, costumes, and spectacle.

    In Musicals the story and music is most important,and the singing voice is not as important as it is in Opera.
    Most stage actors sing but they are known as stage performers not as singers.

    Opera is Drama that is sung with orchestra accompaniment,
    usually a large-scale composition employing vocal soloists, chorus, costumes, and scenery.
    In Opera the Voice is the Most important "instrument".

    Opera performers are hired for their singing skills not for their stage acting (also it would help if they could do a bit of good acting).


  • are you for realz?


  • Some would say a musical uses music and dialogue to further the plot and opera is entirely musical but this is not the difference. There are many what's called "through-sung" musicals which means there is no dialogue such as Les Miserables.

    The biggest differences are the type of singing and the type and importance of the music.

    In Opera's there is a distinct vocal style used. It has only 2 types of musical numbers, Arias which are long poetic songs which can go on for minutes on the same word and recitative which is more similar to normal speaking and is usually not accompanied by the full orchestra. Recitative moves the plot along where Arias bring out the emotion of a single moment.

    Musicals can have any range of vocal styles within them. Also the dialogue and music are given equal weight as far as the story goes. Both the songs and the dialogue (or sung dialogue) move the plot along in a musical.







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