Can anybody tell me the difference between a musical and an opera? I need to settle an argument I had on saturday night.
Operas only rarely use “jazz hands.”
I’d suggest the difference is that in a musical a lot of the dialogue is spoken, whereas in an opera all of the dialogue is sung. But the distinction isn’t always clear, I agree.
It’s a grey area, with no answer.
“Opera = no speaking at all” fails, with Puccini for instance.
“Musicals = popular/contemparary musical idioms” doesn’t really make much sense. West Side Story is described as a musical, whereas Porgy & Bess is an opera. There’s no good reason for this.
“Opera = a specific musical tradition” - doesn’t really cover Tan Dun’s operas, for instance, with their major Chinese influences.
What was the argument? We can probably continue it here 
Here is a good description of an opera. An excerpt:
What’s the difference between an opera and a musical?
The key difference is, in a typical musical dialogue is spoken by the characters who occasionally burst into song. In most operas, the singing never stops. Even instructions as mundane as, “Open the door,” are sung rather than spoken.
By no means the only distinguishing feature, a musical generally has some spoken portions of the “dialog” where an opera is all singing. A notable exception is the movie Umbrellas of Cherbourg which is all singing. The “serious music” nature of the typical opera is another feature, but it’s harder to keep that distinction pure, as there are some less-serious operas.
It may be mostly true that the voices that perform opera are much more stylized and “developed” instruments, but then musical stars like Ethel Merman muddy that water, too. But Ethel was mostly loud as opposed to musical.
Beyond this, I’m not much help because I am not an opera fan. Too stodgy for my tastes. But then, I’m not a big musicals fan, either.
Feel free to ignore this post.
There is definitely a gray area (as GorillaMan mentioned) but it comes down more to stylistic differences than anything else.
Think of it this way (huge generalization coming): An opera is approached from a classical music perspective. A musical is approached from a theatre perspective.
For a musical, the cast is most likely primarily actors who sing. They likely do non-musical theatre as well (probably more often), and are trained in acting and in theatre (Mandy Patinkin, Angela Lansbury, Bernadette Peters, etc.). They are more concerned with conveying the words and story to the audience, than with the quality of their singing (not that they also can’t be great singers). The music tends to be more accessible to an untrained audience, and more “song-like”. (if you were having a party and there happened to be a piano player there who, after a few drinks decided to sit down at the piano and lead a sing along, you’d all be more likely to sing songs from a musical than arias from an opera).
In an opera, the cast is almost certainly made up of classically trained singers who probably worked on acting as a consequence of wanting to do opera. The music is typically a lot more demanding of both the singers and instrumentalists. Conveying the story is important, but belting the notes out accurately and powerfully takes priority.
Unfortunately, I think a certain degree of snobbery plays a role in making the distinction. Opera is more likely to be considered by its practitioners to be the more “high” art. Personally, I’m moved more by Sondheim than by Wagner (though I realize that’s apples and oranges in at least a few ways).
Incidentally, I don’t believe the distinction has much to do with the proportion of sung to spoken text, though I could be wrong. Off the top of my head, Jesus Christ Superstar and Les Mis are, I believe, almost entirely sung but I wouldn’t consider them opera based on their musical styles.
Since opera was developed so that it could be heard in large venues before the era of amplification, I believe that the “opera style” type of volume necessitates extensive training. Anyone who can sing can be in a musical. And yeah, I think operas, as opposed to musicals, are completely sung.
BTW, I do see that my post contradicts pinkfreud’s cite, but I just don’t buy it. I believe that if you got an opera singer and a musical theatre actor in a room to discuss, they’d talk far more about their differences in singing style and training. (Ideally anyway. I think the distinction has become more and more vague over time, and less important, as the boundaries of various arts of all types get blurred).
Except for musicals like Les Miserables, and operas like The Magic Flute.
If it’s in a foreign language, and rich snobs like it, it’s called “an Opera”.
If it’s in English, and normal people like it, it’s called “a Musical”.
Hey, Moe, that’s probably the best explanation of the distinction that I’ve ever seen. Very helpful.
An opera has singers who can’t act, a musical has actors who can’t sing? 
Unless it is a Sondheim piece 
IIRC, JCS was billed as a Rock Opera. I remember enjoying it so much that I looked forward to obtaining the cast recording of Godspell, mistakenly thinking it too would be a rock opera, and was disappointed that it was only a musical (I later came to enjoy it as much or more than JCS).
Some of Sondheim’s works come very close to crossing over into opera-land - i.e. Sweeney Todd and Pacific Overatures.
Opera performers (ergo, the people who “like it” best) are rarely, if ever, rich. Quite to the contrary, music people tend not to get paid all that well outside of pop music. But I’m guessing you already knew that. Nor are operas necessarily in a foreign language*, nor do they necessarily use classical instruments or styles, nor is anything you said accurate.
And lots of normal people despise musicals.
(I should point out for the sake of full disclosure that I tend to dislike both, though I have been an understudy in an opera and an extra in a musical.)
There are two major differences between operas and musicals that I can think of:
-Operas generally delineate well into arias and recitatives, where the former are fully developed songs with distinct tunes and accompaniment, and the latter do not have distinct tunes. Generally, anything you would recognize that comes from an opera is an aria.
-An operatic singer has to massively out-sing any actor from a musical, simply because s/he must balance an entire orchestra without the aid of a microphone (as the earlier site claimed). Even with a microphone, it’s difficult to get a decent balance without vocal technique; toss on some running around the stage, and it’s a massively physical activity.
*For operas that are not in English, it is apparently becoming quite common to run subtitles on a screen near the stage, so that anyone can tell what is going on.
My memory is nearly completely failing me right now, (so beware of very hazy details ahead) but there was recently a book published which discussed the top 50 (100?, something) operas of the 20th century (or maybe it was all-time), and included Sweeney Todd.
To me Sondheim is clearly writing musical theatre stylistically, but his music is so sophisticated and complex (I believe he actually studied with Milton Babbit) that it really blurs the distinction. (Despite what I said earlier about apples and oranges, his use of leitmotives is actually very similar to Wagner).
Thanks for all the replies, they were really helpful. For me the difference between the two boils down to the different training usually undertaken by the performers. Opera singers tend to be classically trained, musical stars not so much. Operas also tend not to include dancing while a musical tends to have a lot of leaping about.
What started all this is that somebody tried to tell me that Phantom of the Opera was an opera. I disagreed strongly but I was unable to tie down exactly what the distinction was and an argument ensued (yes I was drinking, why do you ask?)
I don’t know about his studying with Milton Rabbit (I shall have to google that name when I get home) but it is a well known fact that he cut his teeth at the feet of Leonard Bernstein.
I’m glad you included the word ‘generally’ - this generalisation isn’t really even that, but a description of a few particular operatic styles.
Of course, in Italy, operas in Italian aren’t “in a foreign language”…
This is more a description of particular styles of Broadway musicals, which are designed as full-on spectaculars, than anything else.
Opera or musical, that’s irrelevant, because it’s a steaming pile of rotten shit. To use correct musicological terminology.
ok, who is Milton Rabbit?