A melodrama is a dramatic work in which plot, typically sensationalized for a strong emotional appeal, takes precedence over detailed characterization. Melodrama is "an exaggerated version of drama". Melodramas typically concentrate on dialogue that is often bombastic or extremely sentimental, rather than on action. Characters are often flat and written to fulfill established character archetypes. Melodramas are typically set in the private sphere of the home, focusing on morality, family issues, love, and marriage, often with challenges from an outside source, such as a "temptress", a scoundrel, or an aristocratic villain. A melodrama on stage, film, or television is usually accompanied by dramatic and suggestive music that offers further cues to the audience of the dramatic beats being presented.
In scholarly and historical musical contexts, melodramas are specifically Victorian dramas in which orchestral music or song was used to accompany the action. However the term melodrama is now also applied to stage performances (Victorian or otherwise) without incidental music, novels, films, television, and radio broadcasts that display the previously mentioned qualities. In modern contexts, the term melodrama is generally pejorative, as it suggests that the work in question lacks subtlety or character development. By extension, language or behavior that resembles melodrama is often called melodramatic, usually as a pejorative term.
Etymology The term was first used in English in 1784 (in 1782 as melo drame) and came from the French word (),"melodrama (n.)", Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved September 15, 2024, which was itself derived from Greek ("song" or "music") and French ("drama").
Characteristics The relationship of melodrama and realism is complex. Protagonists of melodramatic works may be ordinary (and hence realistically drawn) people who are caught up in extraordinary events or highly exaggerated and unrealistic characters. With regard to its high emotions and dramatic rhetoric, melodrama represents a "victory over repression".Brooks, Peter (1995). The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama, and the Mode of Excess. Yale University Press. p. 41. Late Victorian and Edwardian melodrama combined a conscious focus on realism in stage sets and props with "anti-realism" in character and plot. Melodrama in this period strove for "credible accuracy in the depiction of incredible, extraordinary" scenes.
Melodramas focus on a victim. For example, a melodrama may present a person’s struggle between good and evil choices, such as a man being encouraged to leave his family by an "evil temptress". Stock characters include the "fallen woman", the single mother, the orphan, and the male who is struggling with the impacts of the modern world. The melodrama examines family and social issues in the context of a private home. Its intended audience is a female spectator, but a male viewer can also enjoy its presentation of resolved tensions in a home. Melodrama generally looks back at ideal, nostalgic eras emphasizing "forbidden longings".Hayward, Susan. "Melodrama and Women's Films" in Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts (Third Edition). Routledge, 2006. p.236-242
Melodrama was associated with the rise of capitalism in the 19th century. French romantic drama and sentimental novels were popular in both the United Kingdom and France. These dramas and novels focused on moral codes in regard to family life, love, and marriage, and they can be seen as a reflection of issues brought up by the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution and the shift to modernization. Many melodramas were about a middle-class young woman who experienced unwanted sexual advances from an aristocratic miscreant, the sexual assault being a metaphor for class conflict. The melodrama reflected post-Industrial Revolution anxieties of the middle class, who was afraid of both aristocratic power brokers and the impoverished working class "mob".
Types
18th-century origins: monodrama and duodrama Melodrama arose in the second half of the 18th century as a genre intermediate between play and opera. It combined spoken recitation with short pieces of accompanying music. Music and spoken dialogue typically alternated in such works, although the music was sometimes also used to accompany pantomime. If there is one actor, the term monodrama may be used; if there are two— duodrama.Willi Apel, ed. (1969). Harvard Dictionary of Music, Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. . . It also sometimes appeared as a scene within a play or an opera. It was only later, in the nineteenth century, that the term lost its association with music and began to be used for plays with sentimental and sensational plots typical of popular Victorian drama.Anne Dhu Shapiro (1992), "Melodrama", vol. 3, pp. 324–327, in The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, four volumes, edited by Stanley Sadie. London & New York: Macmillan. . (1998 paperback); 2002 online reprint (with the author's name given as Anne Dhu McLucas), Grove Music Online.
The earliest known examples of melodrama are scenes in J. E. Eberlin's Latin school play Sigismundus (1753). The first full melodrama was Jean-Jacques Rousseau's monodrama Pygmalion, the text of which was written in 1762; it was first staged in Lyon in 1770. Rousseau composed the overture and an Andante, but the bulk of the music was composed by Horace Coignet.Daniel Heartz (1992). "Rousseau, Jean-Jacques", vol. 4, pp. 72–73, in The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, four volumes, edited by Stanley Sadie. London & New York: Macmillan. ; (1998 paperback); 2002 online reprint, Grove Music Online.
A different musical setting of Rousseau's Pygmalion by Anton Schweitzer was performed in Weimar in 1772, and Goethe wrote of it approvingly in Dichtung und Wahrheit.Peter Branscombe, "Melodrama". In Sadie, Stanley; John Tyrrell, eds. (2001). The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edition. New York: Grove's Dictionaries. ; 2001 online reprint, Grove Music Online.
Some 30 other monodramas were produced in Germany in the fourth quarter of the 18th century.Anne Dhu McLucas (2001), "Monodrama", Grove Music Online. Georg Benda was particularly successful with his duodramas Ariadne auf Naxos (1775) and Medea (1775). The sensational success of Benda's melodramas led others to compose similar works. Mozart, for example, spoke approvingly of Benda's music and later used two long melodramatic monologues in his opera Zaide (1780).
Later and better-known examples of the melodramatic style in operas are the grave-digging scene in Beethoven's Fidelio (1805) and the incantation scene in Weber's Der Freischütz (1821).
English Restoration comedy After the English Restoration of Charles II in 1660 lifted the Puritan ban on theatre, most British theatres were prohibited from performing "serious" drama but were permitted to show comedy or plays with music. Charles II issued letters patent to permit only two London theatre companies to perform "serious" drama. These were the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane and Lisle's Tennis Court in Lincoln's Inn Fields, the latter of which moved to the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden in 1720 (now the Royal Opera House). The two patent theatres closed in the summer months. To fill the gap, the Theatre Royal, Haymarket became a third patent theatre in London in 1766.
Further letters patent were eventually granted to one theatre in each of several other British towns and cities. Other theatres presented dramas that were underscored with music and, borrowing the French term, called it melodrama to get around the restriction. The Theatres Act 1843 finally allowed all theatres to play drama.Fisk, Deborah Payne (2001). "The Restoration Actress", in Owen, Sue, A Companion to Restoration Drama. Oxford: Blackwell.
19th century: operetta, incidental music, and salon entertainment In the early 19th century, opera's influence led to musical overtures and incidental music for many plays. In 1820, Franz Schubert wrote a melodrama, Die Zauberharfe ("The Magic Harp"), setting music behind the play written by G. von Hofmann. It was unsuccessful, like all Schubert's theatre ventures, but the melodrama genre was at the time a popular one. In an age of underpaid musicians, many 19th-century plays in London had an orchestra in the pit. In 1826, Felix Mendelssohn wrote his well-known overture to Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, and later supplied the play with incidental music.
In Verdi's La Traviata, Violetta receives a letter from Alfredo's father where he writes that Alfredo now knows why she parted from him and that he forgives her ("Teneste la promessa..."). In her speaking voice, she intones the words of what is written, while the orchestra recapitulates the music of their first love from Act I: this is technically melodrama. In a few moments, Violetta bursts into a passionate despairing aria ("Addio, del passato"): this is opera again.
In a similar manner, Victorians often added "incidental music" under the dialogue to a pre-existing play, although this style of composition was already practiced in the days of Ludwig van Beethoven (Egmont) and Franz Schubert (Rosamunde). (This type of often-lavish production is now mostly limited to film (see film score) due to the cost of hiring an orchestra. Modern recording technology is producing a certain revival of the practice in theatre, but not on the former scale.) A particularly complete version of this form, Sullivan's incidental music to Tennyson's The Foresters, is available online,The Foresters from Gilbert and Sullivan online archive complete with several melodramas, for instance, No. 12 found here. A few operettas exhibit melodrama in the sense of music played under spoken dialogue, for instance, Gilbert and Sullivan's Ruddigore (itself a parody of melodramas in the modern sense) has a short "melodrame" (reduced to dialogue alone in many productions) in the second act; Jacques Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld opens with a melodrama delivered by the character of "Public Opinion"; and other pieces from operetta and musicals may be considered melodramas, such as the "Recit and Minuet" in Gilbert and Sullivan's The Sorcerer. As an example from the American musical, several long speeches in Lerner and Loewe's Brigadoon are delivered over an accompaniment of evocative music. The technique is also frequently used in Spanish zarzuela, both in the 19th and 20th centuries, and continued also to be used as a "special effect" in opera, for instance Richard Strauss's Die Frau ohne Schatten.
In Paris, the 19th century saw a flourishing of melodrama in the many theatres that were located on the popular Boulevard du Crime, especially in the Gaîté. All this came to an end, however, when most of these theatres were demolished during the rebuilding of Paris by Baron Haussmann in 1862.The golden age of the Boulevard du Crime Theatre online.com (in French)