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Concerts, music festivals, television series, professional wrestling matches—these are quite the undertakings. Luckily, there’s a word for the impressive individuals responsible for organizing and overseeing such productions: impresario. In the 1700s, English borrowed impresario directly from Italian, whose noun impresa means “undertaking.” (A close relative is the English word emprise, “an adventurous, daring, or chivalric enterprise,” which, like impresario, traces back to the Latin verb prehendere, meaning “to seize.”) At first English speakers used impresario as the Italians did, to refer to opera company managers, though today it is used much more broadly. It should be noted that, despite their apparent similarities, impress and impresario are not related. Impress is a descendant of the Latin verb pressare, a form of the word premere, meaning “to press.”
Examples of impresario in a Sentence
Shoshi Parks, Smithsonian Magazine, 20 June 2025
Melton partnered with Wayne Johnson and Tony Perry, two nightlife impresarios who had already transformed D.C.’s after-dark culture.
—Kimberly Wilson, Essence, 17 June 2025
His brother Carter Thicke, son Julian Fuego, Gianni Harrell and longtime friend Usher served as groomsmen, and the ceremony was officiated by nightlife impresario Richie Akiva.
—Sabienna Bowman, People.com, 2 June 2025
Combs himself might have alluded to a propensity to stash money away in the 1997 hit that helped launch his rapping career after years as a producer and impresario.
—Josh Meyer, USA Today, 15 May 2025
See All Example Sentences for impresario
Cite this Entry
“Impresario.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/impresario. Accessed 1 Jul. 2025.
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impresario
noun
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