I just finished “Revenger”, by Alastair Reynolds, and I think it definitely fits the bill for space opera. I enjoyed it quite a bit – almost steampunk-ish tech (sailing through space), lots of mystical artifacts and robots, and space pirates. A pretty quick read, too. I had read the Revelation Space stuff years ago, and I didn’t remember enjoying it nearly as much as I enjoyed this one.
A Fire Upon the Deep is one of the greatest space opera novels of all time. Anyone wanting space opera would do well to read it.
FWIW, I’ve only read one book by Weber–some nonsense about an alien invasion of earth–and I invented a new genre term to describe it: ordnance porn. The caliber of bullets, the dimensions of missiles, the firing rates of artillery were given far more detail than characters or setting ever received. It was dreadful, and I doubt I’ll ever read anything else by him.
I suppose one could check out what O. S. Card has been cranking out in his Ender’s game universe recently; The ongoing saga of Mazer Rackham and the first “Bug War”. Lots of zipping around with troops on earth and above it, and later off in distant space. I tried a few of the tomes but it never captured for me the heart of what made the original Ender’s game so good.