Definition
A theatrical production, film, or program on radio or television depicting adventures of characters in the American Old West; a western.
An equestrian show, as in a circus.
In Context
- "Three new examples of Hollywood's staple commodity, the horse opera, all filmed in color, contain the full quota of galloping and gunplay."
- "It's in this horse-opera mode that War For The Planet Of The Apes finds its most rewarding rhythms: in the parallels between Caesar's woodland stronghold and the archetypal frontier settlements of Western fiction; […]"
- "The Ravels, after having played a successful engagement at the Metropolitan, closed last evening, and sail to-day for New-Orleans, and now we have no amusement but nigger minstrels and the horse opera—i.e., circus."
- "Nor is it much easier to give the analysis of this extraordinary odyssey, which relates the trials, sufferings, and adventures of an ex-Sous-Prefêt, who has married a circus rider, and has abandoned home, friends, and position, to become the manager of an itinerant horse-opera."
Also Said As
- hoss opera
- oater
- oat opera