While the term ‘soap opera’ is broadly used today to mean a radio or TV drama series dealing with domestic situations, in the beginning, soap opera was used to refer to ‘daytime’ serials (and not evening serials).
The word opera meaning “work” in Italian was first used in the musical/theatrical sense in 1639 (musical work = opera).
Opera, since then, has been used to refer to a kind of theatrical performance in which music plays a leading role.
And some of the most popular operas by great music composers such as Mozart (1756-1791), Verdi (1813-1901), and Puccini (1858-1924) revolved around people and family stories.
It is from here that the term ‘opera’ was picked up for radio and TV serials, which depicted the interconnected lives of many characters in a sentimental, melodramatic way.
Now, in the 1920s and the 1930s, a number of such serials were broadcast on radio during the daytime, targeted mainly to housewives.
And with housewives as the audience, radio stations began pitching advertising space on the radio to manufacturers of household products.
Procter & Gamble (P&G) was the first major advertiser to sponsor one of the daytime dramas for its Oxydol soap powder (a laundry detergent).
It didn’t take long for other soap and household goods manufacturers to start sponsoring/advertising on daytime shows.
Since too much ‘soap’ sponsorship was happening (P&G sponsored around 20 shows over the next few years and also produced a few daytime shows), the name ‘soap opera’ stuck.
While the term ‘soap opera’ to refer to these shows was used for the first time in 1939 in Los Angeles Times, the first program to be considered a soap opera is Pained Dreams (1930).
