[ad. It. estravaganza (an) extravagance (more commonly stravaganza), refashioned after L. extra-.]
1. A composition, literary, musical or dramatic, of an extravagant or fantastic character.
1794. Mathias, Purs. Lit. (1798), 343. Author of the pleasant Extravaganza on the Courage of Sir John Falstaff.
1815. W. H. Ireland, Scribbleomania, 22, note. A portion of the extravaganza of that writer’s Curse of Kehama.
1833. Planché, Extravaganzas (1879), I. 115. High, Low, Jack, and the Game … a most extravagant Extravaganza.
1873. M. Arnold, Lit. & Dogma, xii. § 3. 372. The difference between the grandeur of an extravaganza and the grandeur of the sea or the sky.
1879. Hullah, in Grove, Dict. Mus., I. 499/2. A musical extravaganza must be the work of a musician familiar with the forms he caricatures.
2. What resembles an extravaganza; bombastic extravagance of language or behavior.
1789. Belsham, Ess., II. xxxvi. 289. The inchantment of Tasso borders upon the extravaganza.
1831. Scott, Nigel, Introd. Bardolph, Nym, Pistol … men who had their humours, or their particular turn of extravaganza.
3. nonce-use. An ‘extravagance’ in dress.
1860. Heads & Hats, 31. Send hoops, crinoline, and all extravaganzas to those bonfires in which we are wont to consume our Guys of every description.
Hence Extravaganzist, an extravaganza writer.
a. 1849. Poe, Marginalia, Wks. 1864, III. 538. That numerous school of extravaganzists who sprang from the ruins of Lamb.
