Breakdown of L'opera è stata venduta a un museo straniero.
essere
to be
un
a / an (masculine)
il museo
the museum
vendere
to sell
a
to / at
l'opera
work (of art/literature)
straniero
foreign
Questions & Answers about L'opera è stata venduta a un museo straniero.
Why are there three verb parts (è stata venduta) for "was sold"?
This sentence uses the passive voice in a compound tense, the passato prossimo. To form it, you take the passato prossimo of the helper verb essere (which is è stata) and add the past participle of the action verb vendere (which is venduta).
Why do both stata and venduta end in -a?
In the passive voice, past participles must agree with the subject in gender and number. Because the subject L'opera is feminine and singular, both the helper participle (stata) and the main verb participle (venduta) change their endings to -a.
Could I use the imperfetto and say era venduta instead?
Using the passato prossimo (è stata venduta) emphasizes that the sale was a single, completed event. If you used the imperfetto (era venduta), it would describe an ongoing state in the past, meaning "was being sold" or "used to be sold".
I thought opera meant musical theater. Why is it in a museum?
The word opera broadly means a "work" or "creation". While it gave us the English word for the musical genre, in the context of a museum it simply means a work of art (un'opera d'arte).
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