Disputatio:Odeum

Lemma

A problem with bringing the adjective melodramaticum into the picture with regard to opera is that melodrama is a technical term in music history: "Beginning in the 18th century, melodrama was a technique of combining spoken recitation with short pieces of accompanying music. In such works, music and spoken dialogue typically alternated, although the music was sometimes also used to accompany pantomime." As that explanation makes obvious, melodrama and opera aren't exactly the same thing. Defining operas as melodramas is like defining rectangles as squares. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 19:20, 29 Martii 2020 (UTC)

Yes, melodrama is not perfect, and perhaps we need some more discussion at Disputatio:Melodrama (musica). I will just say that I see Viator's point about opera already having a separate, common meaning in Latin (L&S: "service, pains, exertion, work, labor"), and so far I don't see any Latin sources for opera in the Italian sense. The case is clearer, I think, against the adjective *operaticus. Operatic- seems to be a "barbarous" formation used in English, occasionally in Spanish, but not the other languages. Even if we go with opera, I think theatrum operae would be best, absent the discovery of a Latin adjective. Ideally we'd 18th- or 19th-century Latin sources that reference operas. They may not make the same distinctions as in English. Lesgles (disputatio) 20:13, 7 Aprilis 2020 (UTC)