Meaning of horse opera | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A theatrical production, film, or program on radio or television depicting adventures of characters in the American Old West; a western.
   idiomatic
2. An equestrian show, as in a circus.
   archaic, idiomatic

Examples

“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.”

CEFR level