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nytimes.com
- 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.
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In scholarly and historical musical contexts, melodramas are Victorian dramas in which orchestral music or song was used to accompany the action. The term is now also applied to stage performances without incidental music, novels, films, television, and radio broadcasts.
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.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Jun 10, 2024 · 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.
Nov 28, 2021 · The term “melodrama” originated from a combination of the Greek melos meaning “melody” or “song” and the French word drame meaning “drama.” Melodramas were originally theatrical stage plays combining music and dialogue. They were especially popular during the Victorian Era.
May 14, 2018 · First, melodrama refers to a specific theatrical genre that emerged in Europe, especially France and England, during the late eighteenth century and became extremely popular during the nineteenth century. The term was originally used by Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) to describe his play Pygmalion (1770).
The ‘first’ English melodrama is still usually said to be Thomas Holcroft’s A Tale of Mystery, his sleek and powerful adaptation of Pixérécourt’s Coelina; ou l’enfant du mystère (1800), presented as an afterpiece at Covent Garden in 1802.
Like the French Revolution, which served as its most immediate catalyst and its theatrical crucible, the appearance of melodrama draws a line in time, demarcating the old from the new, the pre-modern from the modern in fundamental and revealing ways.
