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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
Alison Herman, Variety, 20 Apr. 2026
Across town, drummer/impresario Mike Reed stages a tribute of his own to the city’s avant-garde, delving into everything from AACM bassist Fred Hopkins’ oeuvre to music composed in Chicago between 1980 and 2010.
—Hannah Edgar, Chicago Tribune, 15 Apr. 2026
The television impresario Ed Sullivan is to be honored with the Ahmet Ertegun Award, a commendation for non-performers named after the late Atlantic Records co-founder who started the Rock Hall with Rolling Stone magazine’s Jann Wenner in the mid-1980s.
—Mikael Wood, Los Angeles Times, 14 Apr. 2026
The series is devised and curated by poet/singer-songwriter/teacher Darius Degher who, along with poet-pedagogue Marit Anderson and local arts impresario Michael Schmitt, hosts the readings, according to a news release.
—News Release, San Diego Union-Tribune, 9 Apr. 2026
See All Example Sentences for impresario
Cite this Entry
“Impresario.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/impresario. Accessed 28 Apr. 2026.
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impresario
noun
