From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishrecitativere‧ci‧ta‧tive /ˌresətəˈtiːv/ noun [countable, uncountable] technicalAPM a speech set to music that is sung by one person and continues the story of an opera (=musical play) between the songs
Examples from the Corpus
recitative• Although there is once again some interfering aspirates, some improvement is noticeable, and the text in recitatives is better delivered.• Mozart received the libretto in advance and composed some of the recitatives in Salzburg.• We decided to omit the recitatives because, quite frankly, they are not very interesting.Origin recitative (1600-1700) Italian recitativo, from recitare, from Latin; → RECITE 