Islander sending up all but two characters in opera (5)
I believe the answer is:
cuban
'islander' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'sending up all but two characters in opera' is the wordplay.
'two characters' means two substitutions for 'character'.
'sending' indicates an anagram (letters are sent to different positions).
'all but' means to remove the last letter ('all but' can mean 'almost' or 'nearly').
'character' becomes 'c'.
'character' becomes 'B'.
'in opera' becomes 'an' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'up' with its last letter taken off is 'u'.
'u'+'c'='uc'
'uc' anagrammed gives 'cu'.
'cu'+'b'+'an'='CUBAN'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for cuban that I've seen before include "Kind of high quality cigar" , "Like Fidel Castro" , "From Castro's island" , "Nationality of citizen of Havana" , "One from Havana" .)