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Definition: melodrama from Philip's Encyclopedia

Theatrical form originating in late 18th-century France, and achieving its greatest popularity during the following century. It relied on simple, violent plots in which virtue was finally rewarded.

melodrama

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
[Gr.,=song-drama], originally a spoken text with musical background, as in Greek drama. The form was popular in the 18th cent., when its composers included Georg Benda, J. J. Rousseau, and W. A. Mozart, among others. Modern examples of the true music melodrama are found in Richard Strauss's setting of Tennyson's Enoch Arden , and in Arnold Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire. J. J. Rousseau's melodrama Pygmalion (1762; first performed 1770) helped create a vogue for stage plays in which the action was generally romantic, full of violent action, and often characterized by the final triumph of virtue. The common use of the term melodrama refers to sentimental stage plays of this sort. The leading authors of melodramas in the early 19th cent. were Guilbert de Pixérécourt of France and the German August von Kotzebue. The term was used extensively in England in the 19th cent. as a device to circumvent the law that limited legitimate plays to certain theaters. One of the most-popular of theatrical…
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Full text Article melodrama.

From The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Stage Actors and Acting
Originally a ‘play with music’, melodrama was one of the most popular genres on the European, American, and Australasian stage during the nineteenth century. Musical accompaniment remained an important factor in melodrama, but the genre was increasingly associated with action-packed plots (to which…
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Full text Article melodrama

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
[Gr.,=song-drama], originally a spoken text with musical background, as in Greek drama. The form was popular in the 18th cent., when its composers included Georg Benda, J. J. Rousseau, and W. A. Mozart, among others. Modern examples of the true music melodrama are found in Richard Strauss's setting…
| 250 words
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Full text Article Melodrama

From The Harvard Dictionary of Music
A musico-dramatic technique in which spoken text alternates with instrumental music or, more rarely, is recited against a continuing musical background. There are examples of entire works using this technique (sometimes called monodrama if there is only one character or duodrama if there are two…
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Full text Article melodrama

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
Play or film with romantic and sensational plot elements, often concerned with crime, vice, or catastrophe. Originally a melodrama was a play with an accompaniment of music contributing to the dramatic effect. It became popular in the late 18th century, due to works like Pygmalion (1770), with…
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Full text Article melodrama

From The Oxford Companion to Theatre and Performance
The term ‘melodrama’ originally meant a performance blending *music and *action , with or without speech, to tell a story (see mélodrame ). It has sometimes been used merely as a formal description, denoting a drama of simple moral imperatives in which embattled goodness eventually triumphs. Such a…
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Full text Article melodrama

From A/V A to Z: An Encyclopedic Dictionary of Media, Entertainment and Other Audiovisual Terms
1 . Commonly: A poorly crafted, overly sensational, and shamelessly sentimental work; one that is unnatural in situation or action. This has led to the popular use of the term melodramatic as an adjective to describe one who is being needlessly dramatic and emotional. 2 . Originally: a kind of drama…
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Full text Article melodrama

From The New Penguin Dictionary of Music
The combination of speech and music, or a section or whole work so written, almost always for a soloist. In this sense the term (from Gk MELOS ), has no melodramatic (from Gk melas = black) connotations. Indeed, the form may not even be dramatic, though most examples are, outside the 19th-century…
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Full text Article Melodrama

From If the Paintings Could Talk
Melodrama
FRANCESCO PESELLINO , COMPLETED BY FRA FILIPPO LIPPI AND WORKSHOP, THE PISTOIA SANTA TRINITA ALTARPIECE, BETWEEN 1455 AND 1460 The story of Pesellino's Trinity altarpiece has all the elements of melodrama: the death of the artist before it was completed, a financial dispute between his widow and his…
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Full text Article melodrama

From The Macquarie Dictionary
a play which does not observe the dramatic laws of cause and effect and which intensifies sentiment and exaggerates passion. Plural: melodramas any work of fiction, as a novel, television series, etc., which has a similar character. Plural: melodramas (in the 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries) a…
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Full text Article melodrama

From Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
Sentimental drama marked by extravagant theatricality, subordination of character development to plot, and focus on sensational incidents. It usually has an improbable plot that features such stock characters as the noble hero, the long-suffering heroine, and the hard-hearted villain, and it ends…
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