Short emperor absorbing a study of brilliant passage (7)
I believe the answer is:
cadenza
'brilliant passage' is the definition.
(virtuoso passage of a piece of music)
'short emperor absorbing a study of' is the wordplay.
'short' means to remove the last letter.
'emperor' becomes 'czar' (I have seen 'Russian emperor ' mean 'czar' so perhaps 'emperor' could also mean 'czar').
'absorbing' is an insertion indicator.
'a study of' becomes 'aden' (I am not sure about this - if you are sure you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'czar' with its final letter taken off is 'cza'.
'cza' placed around 'aden' is 'CADENZA'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for cadenza that I've seen before include "One's passage" , "Elaborate passage for solo instrument or voice" , "Virtuoso performance" , "(In music) virtuoso passage - can daze (anag)" , "Virtuoso passage by solo performer" .)