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melodrama, in Western theatre, sentimental drama with an improbable plot that concerns the vicissitudes suffered by the virtuous at the hands of the villainous but ends happily with virtue triumphant. Featuring stock characters such as the noble hero, the long-suffering heroine, and the cold-blooded villain, the melodrama focusses not on ...
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
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.
Apr 12, 2012 · Abstract. The development of melodrama can perhaps be seen as one of the Romantic period's most important legacies within the history of English drama. Although the arrival of the form within England has often been linked to Thomas Holcroft's production of a version of Guilbert de Pixérécourt's Coelina ou l'Enfant du mystére (Coelina or the ...
Jun 10, 2024 · Melodrama’ is a hybrid of ‘mélo’ (music, melody) and ‘drame’ (drama). Melodrama emerged as a distinct form of theatre in the late 18th century, primarily in France and England. The 19th century witnessed the genre’s peak in popularity and artistic development. Early English melodramas were often exotic, with settings in faraway lands.
Height of Melodrama's Popularity. By the 1820s-1840s, melodrama dominated popular theater in Europe and the U.S., with hundreds of plays staged each year to packed houses in major cities; The Victorian era marked the height of melodrama's popularity and cultural influence before more naturalistic styles emerged later in the 19th century
Summary. The Introduction begins by defining the genre of stage melodrama. Gesturing toward its complex prehistory in Europe, the Introduction explains that this volume traces the evolution of the genre in the English nineteenth century. The volume opens with several essays on the early history of melodrama in England, considered through its ...
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Oct 28, 2011 · Scholarship on Stage and Literary Melodrama. Before melodrama became a key—though perpetually evolving—term in cinema studies, and before it became attached to domestic women’s films, it had a long history of scholarship in literary and dramatic studies where it has been a more stable term: usually called sentimental fiction in literary studies, and regularly called melodrama on the stage.
