CNN opera

plural CNN operas

1. derogatorymildlyAn opera about contemporary events.

   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.

   [1997, Opera News

   4 more examples

   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[…]

   [1995 April 10, Peter G. Davis, “Headline Muse”, in New York Magazine, page 52

   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.

   2002, The New Music Connoisseur

   [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.

   2003, New York

   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.

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