ETYM Cf. French musical.
1. Characteristic of or resembling or accompanied by music.
2. Characterized by or capable of producing music.
3. Talented in or devoted to music.

A play or film whose action and dialogue is interspersed with singing and dancing; SYN. musical comedy, musical theater.
20th-century form of dramatic musical performance, combining elements of song, dance, and the spoken word, often characterized by lavish staging and large casts. It developed from the operettas and musical comedies of the 19th century.
The operetta is a light-hearted entertainment with extensive musical content: Jacques Offenbach, Johann Strauss, Franz Lehár, and Gilbert and Sullivan all composed operettas. The musical comedy is an anglicization of the French opéra bouffe, of which the first was A Gaiety Girl 1893, mounted by George Edwardes (1852–1915) at the Gaiety Theatre, London. Typical musical comedies of the 1920s were Rose Marie 1924 by Rudolf Friml (1879–1972); The Student Prince 1924 and The Desert Song 1926, both by Sigmund Romberg (1887–1951); and No, No, Nanette 1925 by Vincent Youmans (1898–1946). The 1930s and 1940s were an era of sophisticated musical comedies with many filmed examples and a strong us presence (Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, and George Gershwin). In England Noël Coward and Ivor Novello also wrote musicals.
In 1943 Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! introduced an integration of plot and music, which was developed in Lerner and Loewe’s My Fair Lady 1956 and Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story 1957. Sandy Wilson’s The Boy Friend 1953 revived the British musical and was followed by hits such as Lionel Bart’s Oliver! 1960. Musicals began to branch into religious and political themes with Oh, What a Lovely War 1963, produced by Joan Littlewood and Charles Chiltern, and the Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals Jesus Christ Superstar 1970 and Evita 1978. Another category of musical, substituting a theme for conventional plotting, includes Stephen Sondheim’s Company 1970, Hamlisch and Kleban’s A Chorus Line 1975, and Lloyd Webber’s Cats 1981, using verses by T S Eliot. In the 1980s 19th-century melodrama was popular, for example Les Misérables 1985 (first London performance), and The Phantom of the Opera 1986.