Space Opera

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"It'll be fabulous, believe me, Jerry. It's Grapes of Wrath in outer space! Oh, it's got heart, it's got laser battles, it's got a timely message of interstellar poverty—!"

— Lorne, Angel ("Life of the Party")

Space Opera refers to works set in a spacefaring civilization, usually, though not always, set in the future, specifically the far future. Technology is ubiquitous and secondary to the story. Space opera has an epic character to it: the universe is big, there are usually many sprawling civilizations and empires, there are political conflicts and intrigue. The action will range part of a solar system, at least, and possibly a whole galaxy or more than one. It frequently takes place in a Standard Sci Fi Setting. It has a romantic element which distinguishes it from most Hard Science Fiction: big love stories, epic space battles, oversized heroes and villains, awe-inspiring scenery, and insanely gorgeous men and women.

Historically, it is a development of the Planetary Romance that looks beyond the exotic locations that were imagined for the local solar system in early science fiction (which the hard light of science revealed to be barren and lifeless) out into an infinite universe of imagined exotic locations. Planetary Romance was more or less Heroic Fantasy In Space. While works such as John Carter of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs were pure Planetary Romance, Buck Rogers and its imitators had essentially codified the Space Opera concept in the popular imagination by the late 1930s, though the earliest strips took place on an After the End future Earth. (Flash Gordon, at least in the classic Alex Raymond era remained resolutely Planetary Romance, tied to the planet Mongo.)

Expect to see a dashing hero cavorting around in a Cool Starship, Green Skinned Space Babes, Crystal Spires and Togas civilizations full of Space Elves, Wave Motion Guns capable of dealing an Earth-Shattering Kaboom on a daily basis, and an evil Galactic Empire with a Standard Sci-Fi Fleet, including an entire universe full of beat-up mechanical objects capable of being resurrected with Percussive Maintenance.

Note that this is quite different from the original definition of space opera, which was originally a derogatory term, following "horse opera" (cheap westerns) and "Soap Opera" (so named because soap operas began as hour-long ads for soap), which requires no explanation. The phrase was coined in 1941 by Wilson Tucker to describe what he called "the hacky, grinding, stinking, outworn space-ship yarn". (It's said that before 1975 or so, the only author who ever intentionally set out to write a space opera was Jack Vance, who wrote a novel, Space Opera, literally about an opera company in space.)

Via semantic drift, well-regarded works such as the Lensman series are today held up as prime examples of Space Opera. As more authors and writers came to embrace the style, the term came to lose many of its negative connotations. Assisting that process were writers who regarded all tales of action and adventure in space as bad, and so tried to pejoratively label it all "space opera"; they succeeded with the label, but not with keeping it pejorative.

The ideal space opera, as described by Brian Aldiss, contains most if not all of the following criteria:

1. The world must be in peril.
2. There must be a quest,
3. And a man or woman to meet the mighty hour.
4. That man or woman must confront aliens and exotic creatures.
5. Space must flow past the ports like wine from a pitcher.
6. Blood must rain down the palace steps,
7. And ships launch out into the louring dark.
8. There must be a woman or man fairer than the skies,
9. And a villain darker than a Black Hole.
10. And all must come right in the end.

Star Wars is inarguably the most famous modern example of space opera. (Indeed, The Empire Strikes Back may have shifted "space opera" from insult to a more neutral genre descriptor, due to the involvement of veteran sf writer Leigh Brackett.) In Star Wars, technology is either magic (the Force) or jazzier versions of today's gadgets (blaster rifles, hovercars, space ships). Any Star Wars character (evil emperor, farmboy, princess) would feel at home in a thick fantasy novel, in part because editor-publisher Lester del Rey derived the "epic fantasy" template partly from Star Wars and partly from The Lord of the Rings, though also because these works borrow from the same source of Jungian imagery.

The genre is useful for long story and character arcs but also expensive to film, unless rendered in animated form, like countless anime series.

While Hard Science Fiction defines itself in part in opposition to space opera (and vice versa), in recent years, however, there has been a trend towards incorporating hard science fiction elements into space opera, as in Starship Operators, the 2000s Battlestar Galactica, Firefly and especially Alistair Reynolds' Revelation Space. In fact, "New Space Opera" has gained some currency as a term referring to works that combine fast-paced adventure plots with some degree of hard SF rigor.

See also Space Western, Two-Fisted Tales, Pulp Magazine, and Wagon Train to the Stars. In many ways, this is the science fiction equivalent of High Fantasy.

Note that while many more famous space operas go to the "ideal" side of the Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism, more recent ones are harder and more cynical: Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica and Firefly being most prominent in Live-Action TV.

Sadly, there aren't too many actual Operas set IN SPACE!.

Examples

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Anime and Manga

Angel Links
Cowboy Bebop
Crest of the Stars
Crusher Joe The first written by Haruka Takachio immediately after seeing Star Wars.
Dragon Ball: The original series was entirely Earth-based, but starting with the Saiyan Saga it began to exhibit a more galactic scope. In the Namek / Frieza Saga, the heroes travel to a faraway planet on a quest to revive their friends, only to end up in a fight for their lives - and the fate of an entire species - against an irredeemably evil Galactic Conqueror and his minions. It does mostly stay back on Earth after Frieza's defeat, though, although a good chunk of the menaces, including from the Non-Serial Movie villains, come from space.
The Five Star Stories
Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo IN SPACE! (Quite different from the Alfred Bester novel The Stars My Destination, which does the same way, though not in a Space Opera way.)
Ginga Sengoku Gunyuuden Rai
Glass Fleet
The Gundam franchise, notable for its (usual) lack of aliens and plausible space colonies.
Heroic Age
Irresponsible Captain Tylor, albeit Played for Laughs.
Legend of Galactic Heroes, a large scale space opera set in the century old clash between an Empire and a Republic.
The classic works of Leiji Matsumoto.
Lyrical Nanoha
Outlanders
Outlaw Star
Science Ninja Team Gatchaman
Space Adventure Cobra
Space Battleship Yamato, the first space opera anime and among the first space operas to use large scale battles between fleets of spacecraft. Among the first space operas to involve the legend Leiji Matsumoto.
Starship Operators, notable for its extreme realism, one of the hardest space operas out there.
Stellvia of the Universe
Str.A.In.: Strategic Armored Infantry
Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki has many Space Opera elements despite taking place mostly on Earth, while spinoff Tenchi Muyo! GXP and the second half of Tenchi Universe are clear-cut examples.
Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, which begins as Desert Punk, turns into one of these after the Time Skip.
Toward the Terra
Trigun (more so in the manga).
Tytania, the closest thing to an anime Dune and written by the same author as Legend of Galactic Heroes though it is an independent story.
Ulysses 31
Vandread: Humanity has split into two factions: Men and Women, who are continually at war with each other. Our story starts with a shipful of women and three guys, all thrown together and having to cooperate to stay alive. As a metaphor, the technology of the two factions combines together to become far greater than the sum of the parts, barely keeping them alive and fueling the story line.
Voltron (the vehicle one) / Dairugger XV

Comic Books

2000 AD:
- The Ballad of Halo Jones, a borderline example in that it overlaps with Mundane Science Fiction.
- Judge Dredd: Though mainly set in a Dystopian Wretched Hive on Earth, several stories (especially The Judge Child Quest) have seen Dredd traverse space and visit many different alien civilizations, both friendly and hostile.
- Shakara is an incredibly Troperrific take on this genre, covering the Roaring Rampage of Revenge of a Killer Robot who was made to avenge the deaths of its species at the hands of the evil alien alliance. Planets blowing up, spaceship battles, and time travel ensue.
- Nemesis the Warlock.
Albedo: Erma Felna EDF mixes this with Furry Fandom, albeit it's also a desconstruction of both genres, being more realistic than the regular space opera.
Buck Rogers and its imitator Flash Gordon are the Trope Codifiers, though the former began as an After the End story and only moved into space and the latter originally stayed on the planet Mongo, where Flash, Dale Arden and Dr. Zarkoff were stranded. (The story takes place in the present day.) However, the popular image and later iterations of the strip have Flash Gordon adventuring in space. Star Wars began after Lucas failed to obtain the rights to Flash. King Features, realizing their mistake, made the Flash Gordon film after the wild success of Star Wars.
Dan Dare
Dreadstar by Jim Starlin.
Green Lantern has a foot firmly placed in Space Opera, especially in Crisis Crossover comics like Sinestro Corps War where Sinestro himself set the war up so he wins either way.
Marvel Comics turned the cosmic part of their Shared Universe into one giant Space Opera, since 2006. Starting with X-Men: Rise and Fall of the Shi'Ar Empire and Annihilation, we got one epic story after another — Annihilation Conquest, War of Kings, The Thanos Imperative and adventures of many cosmic-themed heroes, like Nova and Guardians of the Galaxy between them.
Alexandro Jodorowsky's Metabarons Universe, particularly The Metabarons.
Paperinik New Adventures goes into Space Opera territory sometimes, such as for the Xadhoom Trilogy.
Prophet
Saga
Valérian essentially Trope Codifier, as it went on to inspire many seminal Space Operas, including Star Wars and The Fifth Element.
X-Men ventures here occasionally, in the The Dark Phoenix Saga, for instance.
Cosmo (2018) is an all-ages variant of the genre, which a Rag Tag Bunch Of Misfits explored exotic locales on both the solar system and beyond. In a twist of irony, Max acted as a side character and a pastiche of muscular square-jawed space hero to the alien main characters.

Fan Fiction

Sold To The Highest Bidder is a rather dark one of these, covering the political, emotional, and interpersonal complications of an intergalactic slave trade.
Undocumented Features
Earth's Alien History is a collaborative project Mega Crossover between numerous Sci-Fi franchises (including many of the ones listed elsewhere on this page), which quickly expands into a truly massive universe. The Reaper War Arc alone could constitute a full story all on its own, and a spinoff featuring Colony Ships sent to the Andromeda galaxy has begun as well.

Film

Barbarella
Battle Beyond the Stars, a fun B-Movie Star Wars clone.
Captain EO, a Disney Theme Parks 3-D movie, is less than 20 minutes long but clearly takes place in this genre: A dashing hero with a crew of misfit alien creatures is sent on a mission to transform a grim, H.R. Giger-esque planet. There's a skirmish with the evil Supreme Commander's fleet of starships, and later the heroes are taken captive by her forces — but they use The Power of Rock to turn into it a land of Crystal Spires and Togas and its people (including the ruler) into happy, Day-Glo dancers.
The Chronicles of Riddick
Dune — features a galactic jihad in a Feudal Future containing Spacing Guilds and spice mines.
The Fifth Element, a Space Opera with an opera in space!
Flash Gordon, though it does not technically count. It set out to emulate the success of Star Wars.
- Star Wars was originally going to be a Genre Throwback of the original Flash Gordon serials.
Guardians of the Galaxy and its sequel.
The Ice Pirates
Jupiter Ascending.
Kai: Death of Dreams.
Pandorum has a love story (Bower's wife), battles, a dashing hero (Mahn) and a insanely gorgeous female lead (Nadia).
Queen Of Outer Space, intended by script writer Charles Beaumont as a Stealth Parody.
Spaceballs (although technically, it's a parody of Space Opera.)
Star Odyssey
The Star Trek films, except for The Voyage Home, which was a comedy set on then-modern Earth.
Star Wars is perhaps the most famous modern example (as noted in the main description), with its grand and fantastical tale of heroic rebels fighting against the evil Empire set "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..."
While the rest of the franchise doesn't qualify, Thor: Ragnarok certainly builds off of this genre.
Transformers: The Movie. Some edits even have the Opening Crawl.
The Warlord: Battle for the Galaxy

Literature

C. J. Cherryh's enormous Alliance/Union universe. Probably the "hardest" of all Space Opera, with Faster-Than-Light Travel being the only deviation from known physics.
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie.
A Symphony of Eternity by R.M.Solea, the first book's tagline is: When the universe is at war, which side are you on?; nuff said.
Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard's opus Battlefield Earth.
Parodied by Harry Harrison in his Bill the Galactic Hero and Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers.
Adam Christopher's The Burning Dark uses a Space Opera setting for what is basically a haunted ~~house~~ space station story, Throwing in Eldritch Abominations in towards the end for flavor
The Commamder Toad picture books by Jane Yolen are a parody of space opera.
The Conquerors Trilogy by Timothy Zahn.
John C. Wright's Count to the Eschaton
The Culture books by Iain M. Banks, although again it does have a society changed by technology - in particular near-perfect medicine and a lack of the need for money due to massive technological advances.
Simon R. Green's Deathstalker books.
- The Deathstalker series is both a parody and an homage to more traditional Space Opera's and exaggerating or taking various tropes to their most extreme conclusion.
Walter Jon Williams has a couple:
- His Dread Empire's Fall is space opera on the fairly hard science side, edging into MilSF territory.
- His Drake Maijstral trilogy, by contrast, is a tongue-in-cheek comedy of manners space opera, starring an interstellar Gentleman Thief.
Dune.
Edmond Hamilton: Has big love stories, epic space battles, oversized heroes and villains, awe-inspiring places, gorgeous women, and they usually rule the universe - or at least a star kingdom to boot.
The Flight Engineer trilogy by S.M. Sterling and James Doohan.
Foundation, by Isaac Asimov, an extremely influential series inspired in part by Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and which in turn partly inspired Star Wars.
Future History, a novella set in this genre.
Stephen R. Donaldson's The Gap Cycle is this, as it's Richard Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung cycle IN SPACE!. Newer editions of the first volume have a cool author's note explaining how the dramatic elements (and thus, tropes) of Opera work in a sci-fi setting.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy derives a lot of its humor through parodying space opera conventions. The unrealistic elements typical of the genre are either lampshaded or replaced with even sillier ideas.
David Weber has an extensive one in Honor Harrington. As well as everything else he's written.
Alan Dean Foster's Humanx Commonwealth series. It adopts many Speculative Fiction tropes but plays them for Space Opera themes.
The Hyperion Cantos, by Dan Simmons
The Indranan War
John Carter of Mars and other Planetary Romance novels contain elements of Space Opera, making it an Unbuilt Trope.
Larry Niven's Known Space universe.
Lacuna is firmly in the "New Space Opera" (space opera with hard science) genre.
Philip Reeve's Larklight series, which combines Space Opera with Steam Punk.
The Lensman series by E. E. “Doc” Smith is generally given as the defining example, along with its predecessor and spiritual twin the Skylark Series.
Hugh Howey's Molly Fyde series is a Young Adult version.
John Barnes' Thousand Cultures series.
Perry Rhodan series (over more than 2500 books that span from 1971 to 5050).
Most of Peter F. Hamilton's books, though technological advances have significant societal and cultural impacts.
- Pandora's Star
The Red Rising seriees by Pierce Brown, consisting of one main trilogy, with a prequel comic and a Sequel Series on the way.
Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space Series actually does consider seriously how changes in technology would affect culture and even language.
The Saga of Seven Suns
Greg Egan's Schild's Ladder. Probably even harder than Alliance/Union, with no Faster-Than-Light Travel whatsoever.
The Sirantha Jax Series by Ann Aguirre.
John Maddox Roberts' Space Angel has larger-than-life characters, epic space battles, exotic worlds, and an alien species that inhabits the cores of galaxies. Not a planet in the core of a galaxy, mind you - the whole core.
The Space Captain Smith series by Toby Frost is a very tongue-in-cheek version.
Parodied and lampshaded in Jack Vance's Space Opera, which is a space opera about - yes - a touring Opera company.
- Many of Vance's works - such as The Demon Princes- are more straightforward examples.
Space Vulture, a Genre Throwback to the original pulp Space Opera, by Gary K. Wolf and Archbishop John J. Meyers.
Julie E. Czerneda's Species Imperative.
Michael Flynn's Spiral Arm series
The Stars My Destination.
Margaret Weis' tetralogy The Star of the Guardians.
The Stardoc series has elements of both this and Medical Drama.
Theirs Not to Reason Why is firmly in Space Opera territory, with Psychic Powers, Energy Beings, multiple types of Faster Than Light, etc.
The Rowan series by Anne McCaffrey.
David Brin's Uplift.
Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga, complete with an in-story Space Ballet.
Karin Lowachee's Warchild Series.
Stephen Baxter's Xeelee Sequence may well be the ultimate example in terms of scale, as well as being much harder sci-fi than the average space opera.
Vernor Vinge's Zones of Thought series.
Lucifer's Star by C.T. Phipps is a dark space opera story about how the Red Baron-esque pilot of a Feudal Future nation discovers his side was gasp the bad guys in a war and has to deal with the consequences. It also includes bioroid slavery, Elder Races, and a massive interplanetary war.
Aeon 14 is an epic about a colony ship, Intrepid, trying to leave the insanity of slower-than-light life in Sol, only to run into even bigger problems and ultimately Sleep Through The Apocalypse and land in a more typical Faster-Than-Light Travel setting.
The Secret King by Dawn Chapman is a series similar to the 1970s Battlestar Galactica with a race of aliens fleeing their doomed homeplanet to travel to Earth in the present day.

Live Action TV

Andromeda: Originally created by Gene Roddenberry, pitched by Majel Roddenberry, and steered by Robert Hewitt Wolfe (of Deep Space Nine). It was a Vancouver production and it shows. You'll see the ensemble recycled in other Canadian productions from that era: SG-1, Lexx, etc. These days, it is best remembered for Lexa Doig in tight outfits. Can't blame Michael Shanks for knocking her up, though it did remove her from the show for a while.
- In Season Three the network pushed for a more episodic show with more focus on Kevin Sorbo's character. The last year (Hercules: The Legendary Space Journeys) was panned by fans.
Babylon 5: A sort of "five-year miniseries" which rewards multiple viewings. If their direct competitor borrowed from old westerns and war movies, B5 was a space-based Middle Earth, but with enough verisimilitude to take those tropes and make it into something you can believe in. (The "techno-mages", a monk-like order of reclusive scientists, are one such example of this dual nature.) It helps that Andreas Katulas (G'Kar) has such a commanding air that pretty much everybody raises their game in his presence.
- The aftershow, Crusade, suffered from network meddling and budget restrictions, among other things. The second spinoff, Legend of the Rangers (LOTR, get it?) probably isn't worth your time unless you're a fan: 15 minutes of G'kar (one of Andreas Katulas' final performances before he died!) and 1 hour and 45 minutes of not much happening.
Battlestar Galactica (1978) and Battlestar Galactica (2003) are at opposite ends of the Idealist-Cynic scale. Both had their share of movies and spin-offs.
- Galactica 1980 was more Family Friendly.
- Ron D. Moore's ambitious spin-off series, Caprica, had positive critical reviews. During the first season, Moore stuck to his guns about keeping it a family drama, but the last few episodes were so packed with story because the showrunners knew they weren't going to get a second season, and didn't want to leave their open storylines dangling in the wind. Caprica and Blood and Chrome (set during the First Cylon War) never really clicked, because it seemed like they were going down the road of "You served with my father in the Clone Wars?" Caprica simply raised more questions than it answered and complicated the overall story. Still, it's a shame that the lesson they took away from Caprica was that space battles and military bravado was what made BSG popular and gave us Blood and Chrome, which no one liked.
Although Doctor Who is not Space Opera in itself, some individual stories make use of the subgenere.
- "Mission to the Unknown" and the epic twelve part "The Daleks' Master Plan". Oddly, "Mission to the Unknown", the prelude episode feels like an Unbuilt Trope version of the sort of stories Star Trek popularised. "Mission to the Unknown" has the Space agent Marc Cory discovering the Dalek plot to invade Earth's solar system but dies before he can even send a message of warning. Earth's central government, which encompasses the whole system also has a subtly dystopian feel to it.
- "The Space Pirates"
- "Frontier In Space" and "Planet of the Daleks", which taken together form a twelve part story like the earlier "The Daleks' Master Plan", though of a very different kind. The Doctor wants to prevent a war between two space empires, while the Master is trying to start one so the Daleks can wipe out both sides once they've exhausted themselves.
- "Earthshock".
- Russell T. Davies' era has several notable examples:
  - "Bad Wolf"/"The Parting of the Ways" - Set on a satellite in a bleak Used Future, it starts with our heroes trapped in deadly game shows and ends with them facing down an entire Dalek army led by The Emperor.
  - "The Impossible Planet"/"The Satan Pit", with an added dose of Lovecraft Lite. A drilling operation on an asteroid orbiting a black hole unearths the Devil himself.
  - "The Stolen Earth"/"Journey's End" - The heroes of the main show and both its spinoffs join forces against Davros and the Daleks, who have stolen multiple planets to build a Doomsday Device the size of a solar system.
- "World Enough and Time"/"The Doctor Falls" - The Doctor, Bill and Nardole are trapped on a spaceship with an army of Cybermen and two versions of the Master. One of them is developing a conscience, the other one really isn't. Time dilation, personal tragedy, dramatic last stands and plenty of explosions are involved.
Earth: Final Conflict: Another posthumous series from Gene Roddenberry. The pilot takes place only 3 years after First Contact. What the series captured perfectly, but ignored in later seasons, was that humans had only recently come to terms with an alien race as part of their world.
- The lead actor was run off the show because the studio felt that it needed to be more episodic. And then they did it again in season five; not a good sign when you have to continually cycle cast members to save money. The tone of the show changed from a sci-fi detective story ("Who are the Taelons and what do they want in exchange for improving Earth") to a Monster of the Week show with very few sci-fi concepts beyond those already established. Sandoval, played by the capable Von Flores, turned out to be the saving grace of the series at that moment, something even the execs could not topple.
Farscape: What's most interesting is that the Aussie TV market was not a market where science fiction had been successful. Like Lexx, you had a large pool of talent wanting to show the world what they could do. They used animatronics because the Jim Henson company wanted to prove they could do film-quality puppets and makeup on a TV schedule. As for the show, it starts off relatively tame, but then it stops pulling punches and shows how savage the universe can be. The aliens are mostly well-done, and the show has a very grim atmosphere to it. (And where else are you going to see a naked blue anthropomorphic plant?)
Firefly, which has the unusual distinction of being both a Space Opera and a Horse Opera. However, Firefly is only a borderline Space Opera, as it has no aliens and according to Word of God is set in a universe with no faster-than-light travel (although this is difficult to reconcile with some of the on-screen events).
Power Rangers
- Power Rangers in Space had begun to to drift this way before the season ended. The Rangers spent more and more time in space fighting evil or trying to rescue Zordon, and the villains were slightly more fleshed out than usual, with the apparent main villain being the franchise's first case of Luke, I Am Your Father.
- Power Rangers Lost Galaxy followed suit, depicting a human colony ship's season-long journey to a new world. Along the way the Rangers deal with Space Pirates, a ruthless Anti-Hero with a tragic past who ends up sacrificing himself, and the (temporary) death of one of their own.
Lexx: One of the crewmembers is an escaped sex slave. The ship is a literal dildo. Don't say we didn't warn you.
Space Cases
Star Trek, perhaps the most famous example in television, with its grand tales of interstellar exploration, romance, intrigue, and war. Though there is (some) serious consideration of how technology and science would change society (not surprising, given that creator Gene Roddenberry originally envisioned using the setting to address social issues that could not have been dealt with in a normal drama back in the 60s). Coincidentally, there was in fact a Star Trek Opera performed on stage in New York.
The Stargate-verse is a borderline example. Technically the center-of-operations is on a single planet (Earth in Stargate SG-1, the Atlantis base in Stargate Atlantis), but with the instant wormholes provided by the Stargate, the bases function like a spaceship or space station in a standard Space Opera, as far as most story purposes go. Both series also have the Big Universe, Big Empires, Big Heroes, and Big Villains elements in spades, and it gets bigger yet once Earth has a space fleet. However, many individual episodes, especially in early seasons, feel more like Planetary Romance. Stargate Universe, the second spin-off, is probably closer to a traditional Space Opera.
Super Sentai often have heroes or villains from outer space but in general, it doesn't fit this trope thanks to being set mostly on earth. Until Uchu Sentai Kyuranger that is, which fit neatly into Space Opera. It's set on a future world where the villain pretty much rules the entire galaxy. The heroes and heroines comprised of Human Aliens, a wolf-man alien, and robots. It's actually set in space as the protagonists travels the galaxy using their Cool Starship, which also functions as their headquarters, to defeat their enemies.

Music

The Amory Wars a metafictional Space Opera comprised of five Concept Albums by Coheed and Cambria.
Ayreon is one of the most prolific examples of this and Neoclassical Punk Zydeco Rockabilly Progressive Rock in one package. The most prominent examples include... pretty much everything. The notable exception is The Human Equation album, up until the very end.
Iron Savior is this too. Their first five albums (and a EP) are almost entirely the story of the titular starship.
Warp Riders, the third album by The Sword is a sci-fi fantasy epic about another eponymous starship.

Newspapers

The long-running The Stars My Degradation, (a parody of the Alfred Bester classic SF novel The Stars My Destination), a cartoon strip that ran in the Sounds music paper in the 1970's-80's:
Dempster Dingbuster is my name, Sputwang is my nation;
The depths of space gob in my face,
The stars, my degradation.
- It was drawn and written by a then-nearly-unknown Alan Moore. Examples may be seen here

Tabletop Games

BattleTech: the backstory and novels put the Soap back in Space Opera.
The Cathedral setting in Big Eyes, Small Mouth is intended for this kind of adventure.
Fading Suns
The forgotten board game Imperium was used as a source for some of the Traveller universe. In it, a young and expansionist republic on earth, conquers a Vestigial Empire in space. There are a number of other Space Opera board wargames, but this one is notable for historical reasons.
Rifts has the Three Galaxies setting, a Space Opera with the same blend of magic, technology, and plain weirdness as the main setting. As may be expected, it's way way down on the hardness scale, but it has pretty much all the elements of the Standard Sci Fi Setting.
Rocket Age only covers our solar system but the epic themes and intrigues of space opera are definitely there. Just replace The Empire with actual Nazis.
There was a RPG named Space Opera.
Pacesetter's 1980s Star Ace RPG, in the spirit of ''Star Wars', but set in an original universe with fewer mystical undertones.
The Star Drive setting originally made for the Alternity system and later reused for d20 Modern.
Paizo's second game, Starfinder is set in the same universe as Pathfinder but advanced thousands of years into the future, with technology and magic being equally ubiquitous among the solar system.
Star Frontiers was TSR's attempt to do D&D in a space opera setting.
Traveller was the first RPG set in the Space Opera genre, and set the standard for those that followed. It's in the harder end of Space Opera and a lot of work went into the Backstory including fairly realistic science and social science. Traveller is flexible enough that a wide variety of flavors of Space Opera can be played, since the setting is one designed for the telling of stories.
Twilight Imperium may as well be the Trope Codifier for space opera board-games. Spice-dealing, trader lions, peaceful turtle-people who smoke weed, living flames put into mechanical bodies, snake-women who have psychic powers; the Twilight Imperium's got it all.
Warhammer 40,000 is overloaded Up to Eleven with adventure, battles, intrigue, and fantasy (including Space Elves, Orks, and even Gods), all in a setting where mankind possesses a galaxy-spanning empire with planet-spanning cities and a population in the trillions. However it's also overloaded with about as much cynicism, grimness, and darkness as you can get (hence the common description "grimdark").

Video Games

Many a science fiction TBSG (turn based strategy game) - most prominently Master of Orion II
Advent Rising: You play as the Sole Survivor of a human world that has been destroyed by aliens. Another alien race takes pity on him and helps him develop his latent psychic potential to basically become a demigod and take the fight back to those other aliens who destroyed his homerworld, getting involved in epic space battles all throughout.
Asura's Wrath has some of this. It's mixed with South Asian Mythology.
Colony Wars
Crisis of the Confederation, a Game Mod based on Crusader Kings II, retains the original game's focus on dramatic character actions and interactions and transplants it to an outer-space setting.
Bungie's Destiny is a fairly direct example, set in a distant, fantastical future where intrepid Guardians wielding the power of "The Traveler" seek to reclaim humanity's lost empire from "The Darkness". The creators themselves described the setting as "mythic science fiction" and a "mix of science fiction and fantasy", with the game being something of a throwback to the idealistic High Fantasy roots of the genre.
Endless Space
EVE Online
Freespace
Galaxy Angel gameverse
GTA Anderius a.k.a Alien City. A very wacky total conversion of San Andreas, although only available in Russian.
The Halo series is a blend of this and more conventional Military Science-Fiction, with the games mostly set on the exotic and ancient artificial worlds created by the Forerunners, whose own technological feats border on the outright fantastical. Additionally, the franchise as a whole has shown plenty of the intrigue, mystery, and adventure to be had in a multi-species setting spanning the Orion Arm and beyond, filled with Lost Technology and complete with a galaxy-threatening Eldritch Abomination.
Infinite Space
Killzone
Legacy of a Thousand Suns
Marathon
The Mass Effect series could be seen as putting the Opera back into Space Operas, with lavish and often dreamy environments, exotic cultures, and tales of great personal tragedy. At the same time, it ranks suprisingly high on the Scale Of Science Fiction Hardness, is quite serious in tone, and takes place in the relatively near future (2180s to be precise). Like many other newer Space Operas, it also has Lovecraft Lite elements thanks to the series' main antagonists, the Reapers.
The Metroid series, although this slides more towards After the End Planetary Romance in the context of individual games. Played straight with Metroid Prime: Hunters and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, as they are the only games in the franchise that internally take place on multiple planets, and the latter shows a bigger interaction with the Galactic Federation.
Otherspace
Ratchet & Clank, a space opera with a hefty dose of Looney Tunes thrown in.
Sentinel Worlds I: Future Magic can be seen as a spiritual predecessor to Mass Effect: you play as a Badass Crew of a Cool Starship sent to a remote star system to deal with enigmatic space raiders who keep attacking civilian freighters. Along the way, you may get into space dogfights, explore strange planets in an all-terrain vehicle, and blast away enemies on-foot with lasers and other futuristic guns.
Sins of a Solar Empire
Spore's Space Stage.
Star Control
Star Fox mixes Funny Animals with Space Opera.
The Star Ocean series, when you aren't exploring underdeveloped planets.
StarCraft
Stellaris aesthetically, and tends towards this generally, though the procedurally generated galaxy and/or player intervention for better or worse can make it more utopian or more grimdark.
Sunless Skies is an unorthodox example that mixes Space Opera with Gaslamp Fantasy. An immortal Queen Victoria reigns from the city of London, transplanted into space after murdering a sun-god. Steam-powered spacecraft of the Royal Navy wage war against plucky colonists determined to win their independence from the New British Empire. The most popular local form of Applied Phlebotinum is time itself in material form, mined from asteroids and refined in massive Workworlds.
Sunrider ticks most of the boxes. The plot involves the crew of a single ship trying to liberate their home planet from a galaxy-conquering tyrant, and getting embroiled in a war between two interstellar superpowers in the process. The main hero is the dashing captain of the aforementioned starship. There’s action, romance, robots, Lost Technology from a bygone era, Space Pirates, and plenty of space battles. The only thing missing is the presence of intelligent aliens.
Super Robot Wars, depending on the plot and series involved.
Total Annihilation
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War
The Wing Commander franchise, which was conceived by its creator Chris Roberts as being "World War II in space". It also has elements of Top Gun as well (with main character Christopher Blair's [canon] callsigh "Maverick" being a direct shout out).
- Chris Roberts' current project, the MMO game Star Citizen is also an example. Furthermore, it has been conceived as a persistent online universe that's constantly evolving. In addition, there's also its single player campaign "Squadron 42", described as a Spiritual Successor to the above mentioned Wing Commander franchise.
Xenosaga
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