The theatrical
genre of
melodrama uses theme-music to manipulate the
spectator's emotional response and to denote character types. The
term combines "
melody" (from the
Greek "melōidía", meaning "song") and
"
drama" (Classical Greek: δράμα, dráma;
meaning "action"). While the use of music is nearly ubiquitous in
modern film, in most cases it is used within a fairly rigid
structure. In a melodrama 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 will be unambiguously bad, and their
entrance will be 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 and/or rescues the heroine. The term is
sometimes used loosely to refer to
plays,
films or
situations in which action or emotion is exaggerated and simplified
for effect. As against
tragedy, melodrama
can have a
happy ending, but this is
not always the case.
18th-century origins: monodrama, duodrama and opera
Beginning in 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 in 1762 and first
staged in Lyon
in
1770. It was then taken up by Goethe in Weimar
in 1772 with
music by Anton Schweitzer.
Georg Benda was very successful with his
Ariadne auf Naxos (1775) and
Medea (1778). Some
30 other monodramas were produced in Germany in the fourth quarter
of the 18th century.
The sensational success of Benda's melodramas led Mozart to use two
long melodramatic monologues in his opera
Zaide (1780). Other later, and more well-known
examples of the melodramatic style in operas (with music under
spoken dialogue) are the grave-digging scene in Beethoven's
Fidelio (1805) and the incantation
scene in Weber's
Der
Freischütz (1821).
19th century: operetta, incidental music and salon
entertainment
A few
operettas exhibit melodrama 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).
Victorian stage melodrama
The
Victorian stage melodrama featured
a limited number of
stock
characters: the hero, the villain, the heroine, an aged parent
and a comic man 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 evolved from the tradition of populist drama
established during the middle ages by
mystery and
morality
plays, under influences from Italian
commedia del'arte as well as 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 novels of the 1860s
and 1870s 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
Tom Taylor's
The Ticket-of-Leave Man are a
unique record of a bygone art-form.
Film
In film, the term 'melodrama' denotes a subgenre of the
drama film which generally depends on
stereotyped character development, interaction,
and highly emotional themes. Melodramatic films tend to use plots
that appeal to the heightened emotions of the audience, often
dealing 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."
A director of 1950s melodrama films was
Douglas Sirk who worked with Rock Hudson on
Written on the Wind and
All That Heaven
Allows, both staples of the genre.
The Moment of Truth movies,
produced for cable television and movie networks during the 1990s,
targeted an audience of American
women and portrayed the
effects of alcoholism, domestic violence, rape and the like.
See also
References
- Apel, Willi, ed. (1969). Harvard Dictionary of Music,
Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged. The Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. SBN 674375017.
- Dialogue from Ruddigore
- Dialogue from The Sorcerer
- The Foresters from Gilbert and Sullivan online
archive
- The Foresters - Act I
- Michael Booth (1991) Theatre in the Victorian Age.
Cambridge University Press: 151
- Jean Tulard (1985) Naploleon: The Myth of the Saviour.
London, Methuen: 213-14
- Dirks T Melodrama Films filmsite.org website opinion
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