How to Use librettist in a Sentence

librettist

noun
  • Terry was an artist in his own right, as an opera librettist and playwright.
    — The Editorial Board, WSJ, 13 Jan. 2022
  • His wife, the librettist Maria Eotvosne Mezei, announced his death.
    — A.j. Goldmann, New York Times, 28 Mar. 2024
  • The chorus refused to sing, the police were called and the librettist was arrested in the melee.
    — Mark Swed, latimes.com, 21 Apr. 2018
  • The composer and librettist are not above adding comedy and dance into the mix.
    — Michael Zwiebach, San Francisco Chronicle, 3 Aug. 2025
  • And his mind meld with his book writers and librettists is just extraordinary.
    — Thomas Floyd, Washington Post, 2 Mar. 2023
  • Composer and librettist were in fact making sizable changes to the text and score during the rehearsals.
    — John Von Rhein, chicagotribune.com, 20 June 2017
  • All of that comes after the work on the script, adapted by the stage version’s librettist Steven Levenson.
    — Michael Phillips, chicagotribune.com, 22 Sep. 2021
  • The description by the composer (who is also his librettist) can hardly be bettered.
    — Classical Music Critic, Los Angeles Times, 27 Mar. 2026
  • Brock is a screenwriter, poet and opera librettist, and D’Agostino is an actor and writer.
    — Leo Barraclough, Variety, 26 Aug. 2021
  • The bride, 29, is a musical theater lyricist and the groom, also 29, is a librettist.
    — New York Times, 10 June 2018
  • From the very earliest days of opera, composers and librettists have turned to literature and poets for inspiration and plot lines.
    — David Lyman, Detroit Free Press, 13 Apr. 2018
  • Puts wondered if the job was for him – until librettist Mark Campbell presented him with a draft for the libretto’s first act.
    — Georgia Rowe, The Mercury News, 7 Feb. 2017
  • Of course, the historical subject of Joan of Arc was for Verdi and his librettist both distant and not.
    — Jeremy Eichler, BostonGlobe.com, 8 Apr. 2018
  • The scenic environments of a dramatic work may emanate from the composer and librettist, but they are achieved—or not—by other artists who should be acknowledged.
    — Larry Wolff, The New York Review of Books, 22 July 2021
  • The scenic environments of a dramatic work may emanate from the composer and librettist, but they are achieved—or not—by other artists who should be acknowledged.
    — Larry Wolff, The New York Review of Books, 11 Mar. 2021
  • Yet librettist Koch stays close to the historical record, even using the historical characters’ own words at times.
    — Michael Zwiebach, San Francisco Chronicle, 3 Aug. 2025
  • The librettist Gene Scheer thinned this fat, meaty book down to a fleet skeleton, organizing the characters into shifting pairs.
    — Justin Davidson, Vulture, 30 Sep. 2025
  • Its composer, Dmitri Shostakovich, lost much of his work, and its librettist, Adrian Piotrovsky, was shot.
    — Alice Robb, The New Republic, 16 Oct. 2023
  • The great benefit of Mosebach’s reflection on the Mass springs out of his vocation as a storyteller and librettist.
    — Michael Brendan Dougherty, National Review, 9 Mar. 2022
  • Composer Jeanine Tesori and librettist Tazewell Thompson wrote the best new opera that barely anyone saw.
    — Washington Post, 9 Dec. 2020
  • But about 10 years ago, Dean put aside his reservations and began to tackle the play, with Matthew Jocelyn by his side as librettist.
    — New York Times, 15 May 2022
  • That same year Smith wed the playwright and librettist Beverly Cross, who predeceased her in 1998.
    — Rosemary Feitelberg, WWD, 27 Sep. 2024
  • This free family opera by composer/librettist Marc Hoffeditz explores themes of weather science, climate change, and care for the Earth.
    — Globe Staff, BostonGlobe.com, 7 June 2023
  • And while Hollywood tried to bring some closure to the play’s plethora of conflicts, Bolcom and librettist Mark Campbell do not.
    — Rob Hubbard, Twin Cities, 12 Mar. 2017
  • The other librettist, documentary filmmaker Kimberly Reed, was once a boy named Paul, whose life is the basis for the piece.
    — Donna Freedman, Anchorage Daily News, 9 Feb. 2018
  • One is a free or low-cost learning series about the composer-librettist pair, whose witty, tuneful works lampooned social climbers, the legal profession, the military, the class system and more.
    — Theater Critic, San Francisco Chronicle, 13 Feb. 2026
  • Their liberating actions are symbolic by design, according to Davis and librettist Havis.
    — George Varga, San Diego Union-Tribune, 11 Jan. 2026
  • Not long before the movie came out, in 1950, Livingston met and married her first husband, the librettist Alan Jay Lerner.
    — Dana Goodyear, The New Yorker, 8 Aug. 2022
  • At first glance, Stravinsky and his librettist, Jean Cocteau, follow the ancient sources in casting Oedipus’ downfall as the necessary outcome of fate.
    — Alex Ross, The New Yorker, 21 June 2021
  • With the help of librettist Hugo von Hoffmannsthal, Strauss imagined what the title character’s state of mind and heart must have been like between her father’s murder and the time when a plot for revenge is hatched.
    — Rob Hubbard, Twin Cities, 6 Oct. 2019

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'librettist.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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