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prima donna
Sign in to saveleading female singer in an opera company
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- title of honor
- Subclass of
- opera singer
- Image
- Silvy, Camille (1835-1910) - Adelina Patti (1843-1919) before 1869.jpg
Show 2 more facts
- partially coincident with
- diva
- described by source
- Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary
Sources (1)
via Wikidata · CC0
~3 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Prima donna clipper ship card In opera or commedia dell'arte, a prima donna ( Italian: [ˈpriːma ˈdɔnna]; Italian for 'first woman'; pl.: prime donne) is the leading female singer in the company, the person to whom the prime roles would be given.
Prime donne often had grand off-stage personalities and were seen as demanding of their colleagues. Because of this, the term has spread in contemporary usage, from its original usage in opera to referring to anyone behaving in a demanding or temperamental fashion or having an inflated view of oneself.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “prima donna” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.