Melodrama+1

The **//melodrama genre//** is the plays, language, behaviour or events which play on the emotions. //Being melodramatic// is now a description of overly emotional behaviour. The term derives from Greek: melos (music) and French: drame (drama). It became a very popular form in France from the early 19th century, where orchestral music, and sometimes song was used to accompany the action.
 * // A Melodrama //** puts characters in danger in order to appeal to the emotions of the audience. It is based around having the same character in every scene, often a hero, a heroine (usually saved by the hero), a villain, and the villain's sidekick (who typically gets in the way of or annoys the villain).

The first full melodrama was [|Jean-Jacques Rousseau]'s //Pygmalion//,first staged in [|Lyon] in 1770. Note that the form involved spoken monologue or duologue interspersed with music, used to heighten the emotion. This was similar to operatta (but did not have the lightness). It tried to match the power of opera but without that form’s dedicated baritones, sopranos, etc. Dialogue in opera is sung as recitative [see [|example]; compare this with a [|melodramatic monlogue], although not too serious in this one. There is an excellent recreation in The Godfather 2 where the immigrant pines for his mother back in Sicily is married to an ‘unworthy’ woman so decided to tae his own life in despair. The guilt on stage would be shared by a large portion of the audience who left families to travel to America]. In Paris, the 19th century saw a flourishing of melodrama in the many theatres that were located on the popular Boulevard du Crime, until the large-scale redevelopment of Paris in 1862. A notable French melodramatist was [|Pixérécourt] Victorians often added "incidental music" under the dialogue to a pre-existing play. This type of often-lavish production is now mostly limited to film as a film score. Modern recording technology is producing a certain revival of the practice in theatre, but not on the former scale. The classic English melodrama took a slightly different path, however.
 * Beginnings **

The Victorian stage melodrama featured six [|stock characters]: the hero, the villain, the heroine, an aged parent, a sidekick and a servant of the aged parent 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] (the heroine or someone close to her) until fate intervenes at the end to ensure the triumph of good over evil. English melodrama evolved from the tradition of populist drama established during the Middle Ages by [|mystery] and [|morality plays]. The first English play to be called a melodrama was //A Tale of Mystery// (1802) by [|Thomas Holcroft]. This was an example of the [|Gothic] sub-genre The next popular sub-genre was the **nautical melodrama**, pioneered by [|Douglas Jerrold] in his [|//Black-Eyed Susan//] (1829). 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. A fascination with things French (no doubt because melodrama began there) led to one of the most popular melodramas, //The Corsican Brothers// adapted by Dion Boucicault which was hugely popular both in Europe and America. It concerned co-joined twins, separated shortly after being born who lead separate lives but feel each other’s pain. They meet again for the climax. This theme was repeated in Willy Russell’s Blood Brothers The [|sensation novels] of the 1860s and 1870s were fertile material for melodramatic adaptations. A notable example of this sub-genre is [|//Lady Audley's Secret//] by [|Elizabeth Braddon] The **villain** was always the central character in melodrama and crime was a favourite 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] and the bizarre exploits of [|Spring Heeled Jack]. Some examples of melodrama (sometimes in parody) : media type="custom" key="24084402"media type="custom" key="24084406"media type="custom" key="24084422"
 * English Victorian Melodrama **

Melodrama had its critics. The most important was [|Constantin Stanislavski] who wanted a more realistic style of drama. Working in Russia with Anton Chekhov he developed a method of drama/acting that emphasised inner-psychology over raw emotion, known to this day as ‘The Method’.
 * The end . . . **

Just when it seemed that Melodrama had seen its day, silent film came along and the need for emotion being through gesture and expression, along with live music in the cinema meant that melodrama had a resurgence. Silent films, such as [|//The Perils of Pauline//] and //[|The Kid]// had all the hallmarks of melodramatic themes. Later, after silent films were superseded by the 'talkies', melodrama found a home in the highly romantic films of the 30’s and 40’s, the broadway stage (via musicals) and television soap operas, where simple stories of love, betrayal, tragedy and heroic deeds are matched with highly-charged displays of emotion.
 * . . . not quite **

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