An impresario (from Italian: impresa, meaning "an enterprise or undertaking") is a person who organizes and often finances concerts, plays or operas; analogous to an artist manager or a film or television producer. The origin of the term is to be found in the social and economic world of Italian opera, where from the mid-18th century to the 1830s, the impresario was the key figure in the organization of a lyric season.