|
|
|
|
Melodrama
|
| |
|
| |
The theatrical genre of Melodrama utilizes theme-music to manipulate the spectator's emotional response and to denote character types. The term combines "melody" (from the Greek "meloidía", meaning "song") and "drama"(Classical Greek: d??µa, dráma; meaning "action"). While the use of music is nearly ubiquitous in modern film, in a melodrama these musical cues will be used within a fairly rigid structure, and the characterizations will accordingly be somewhat more one-dimensional: Heroes will be unambiguously good and their entrance will be heralded by heroic-sounding trumpets and martial music; villains are unambiguously bad, and their entrance is greeted with dark-sounding, ominous chords.
Melodramas tend to be formulaic productions, with a clearly constructed world of connotations: a villain poses a threat, the hero escapes the threat (or rescues the heroine) and there is (generally) a happy ending.
Discussion
Ask a question about 'Melodrama' Start a new discussion about 'Melodrama' Answer questions from other users |
Recent Posts
Encyclopedia
The theatrical genre of Melodrama utilizes theme-music to manipulate the spectator's emotional response and to denote character types. The term combines "melody" (from the Greek "meloidía", meaning "song") and "drama"(Classical Greek: d??µa, dráma; meaning "action"). While the use of music is nearly ubiquitous in modern film, in a melodrama these musical cues will be used within a fairly rigid structure, and the characterizations will accordingly be somewhat more one-dimensional: Heroes will be unambiguously good and their entrance will be heralded by heroic-sounding trumpets and martial music; villains are unambiguously bad, and their entrance is greeted with dark-sounding, ominous chords.
Melodramas tend to be formulaic productions, with a clearly constructed world of connotations: a villain poses a threat, the hero escapes the threat (or rescues the heroine) and there is (generally) a happy ending. However, the term is also used in a broader sense to refer to a play, film, or other work in which emotion is exaggerated and plot and action are emphasized in comparison to the more character-driven emphasis within a drama. Melodramas can also be distinguished from tragedy by the fact that they are open to having a happy ending, but this is not always the case. In the 1970s onward, melodramatic films were often targeted at female viewers, and were nicknamed "tearjerkers" or "weepies".
18th century origins: monodrama, duodrama and opera
Beginning in the second half of the 18th century, melodrama was a technique of combining spoken recitation with short pieces of accompanying music. Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Pygmalion, with music by Horace Coignet, is generally regarded as the first example of the form. This was a monodrama, written for one actor. Written in 1762, it was first staged in Lyon in 1770. It was then taken up by Goethe in Weimar in 1772 with music by Anton Schweitzer. Some 30 other monodramas were produced in Germany in the fourth quarter of the 18th century.
Georg Benda developed the duodrama, written for two actors, with his 1775 works Ariadne auf Naxos and Medea. This form of melodrama was taken up by other composers, notably Mozart in Zaide and Thamos, König in Ägypten, Beethoven in Fidelio and Carl Maria von Weber in Der Freischütz. The technique was also used in lieder and song.
19th century: operetta, incidental music and salon entertainment
A few operettas contain melodramas in this 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 chararacter 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 Sorcerer. In musicals, several long speeches in Lerner and Loewe's Brigadoon are delivered to the accompaniment of rather beautiful, evocative music.
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, complete with several melodramas, for instance, No. 12 found here.
By the end of the 19th century, the term melodrama had nearly exclusively narrowed down to a specific genre of salon entertainment: more or less rhythmically spoken words (often poetry) - not sung, sometimes more or less enacted, at least with some dramatic structure or plot - synchronized to an accompaniment of music (usually piano). It was looked down on as a genre for authors and composers of lesser stature (probably also the reason why virtually no realisations of the genre are still remembered).
This was also the time when the connotation of cheap overacting first became associated with the term. As a cross-over genre mixing narration and chamber music, it was eclipsed nearly overnight by a single composition: Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire (1912), where Sprechstimme was used instead of rhythmically spoken words and which took a freer and more imaginative course regarding the plot prerogatives.
Victorian stage melodrama
The Victorian stage melodrama featured a limited number of stock characters: the hero, the villain, the heroine, an old man, an old woman, a comic man and a comic woman engaged in a sensational plot featuring themes of love and murder. Often the good but not very clever hero is duped by a scheming villain, who has eyes on the damsel in distress until fate intervenes at the end to ensure the triumph of good over evil.
English melodrama was influenced by German Sturm und Drang drama and Parisian melodrama of the post-Revolutionary period.. A notable French melodramatist was Pixérécourt whose La Femme a deux maris was wildly popular with the masses.
The first English play to be called a melodrama or 'melodrame' was A Tale of Mystery (1802) by Thomas Holcroft. This was an example of the Gothic genre, a previous theatrical example of which was The Castle Spectre (1797) by Matthew Gregory Lewis. Other Gothic melodramas include The Miller and his Men (1813) by Isaac Pocock, The Woodsman's Hut (1814) by Samuel Arnold and The Broken Sword (1816) by William Dimond.
Supplanting the Gothic, the next popular sub-genre was the nautical melodrama, pioneered by Douglas Jerrold in his Black-Eyed Susan (1829). Other nautical melodramas included Jerrold's The Mutiny at the Nore (1830) and The Red Rover (1829) by Edward Fitzball (Rowell 1953).
Melodramas based on urban situations became popular in the mid-nineteenth century. These include The Streets of London (1864) by Dion Boucicault; and Lost in London (1867) by Watts Phillips.
The Sensation novel's of the 1860's and 70's were fertile material for melodramatic adaptations. A notable example of this genre is Lady Audley's Secret by Elizabeth Braddon adapted, in two different versions, by George Roberts and C.H. Hazlewood.
The villain was always the central character in melodrama and crime was a favorite theme. This included dramatisations of the murderous careers of Burke and Hare, Sweeney Todd (first featured in The String of Pearls (1847) by George Dibdin Pitt), the murder of Maria Marten in the Red Barn and the bizarre exploits of Spring Heeled Jack. The misfortunes of a discharged prisoner is the theme of the sensational The Ticket-of-Leave Man (1863) by Tom Taylor.
Early silent films, such as The Perils of Pauline had similar themes. Later, after silent films were superseded by the 'talkies', stage actor Tod Slaughter, at the age of 50, transferred to the screen the Victorian melodramas in which he had played villain in his earlier theatrical career. These films, which include Maria Marten or Murder in the Red Barn (1935), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1936) and The Ticket of Leave Man are a unique record of a bygone art-form.
Film
In film, a melodrama is a subgenre of the drama film. Like drama, a melodrama depends mostly on in-depth character development, interaction, and highly emotional themes. Melodramatic films tend to use plots that appeal to the heightened emotions of the audience. Melodramatic plots often deal with "crises of human emotion, failed romance or friendship, strained familial situations, tragedy, illness, neuroses, or emotional and physical hardship." Film critics sometimes use the term "pejoratively to connote an unrealistic, pathos-filled, campy tale of romance or domestic situations with stereotypical characters (often including a central female character) that would directly appeal to feminine audiences."
The "Moment of Truth Movies" is a series of TV movies produced for the Lifetime cable television and movie networks during the 1990s. The network marketed itself towards an audience of American women; as such, the Moment of Truth movies were invariably issues melodrama with stories told from a female perspective. They often featured diseases such as alcoholism, or plots involving domestic violence, a brutal rape or betrayal by a spouse; however, the typical plot of such a movie required a happy ending, in which the victim recovered from their disease or the offender was jailed for their crimes. Some of the TV movies produced in the series include: Deceived by Trust (1995), Eye of the Stalker (1995), Abduction of Innocence (1996), and When Friendship Kills (1996).
See also
|
| |
|
|
