melodrama

Noun

Meaning

Formerly, a kind of drama having a musical accompaniment to intensify the effect of certain scenes. Now, a drama abounding in romantic sentiment and agonizing situations, with a musical accompaniment only in parts which are especially thrilling or pathetic. In opera, a passage in which the orchestra plays a somewhat descriptive accompaniment, while the actor speaks; as, the melodrama in the gravedigging scene of Beethoven's "Fidelio".

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Phrases with the word

Examples

Love in France is a comedy; in England a tragedy; in Italy an opera seria; and in Germany a melodrama. Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

The constraints of melodrama can be a great blessing, because they demand that all the characters involved - as absurd and extreme as they may initially seem - must stay utterly rooted in their own reality, or the whole project collapses. Stanley Tucci

Art never seems to make me peaceful or pure. I always seem to be wrapped in the melodrama of vulgarity. I do not think.... of art as a situation of comfort. Willem de Kooning

If a man went simply by what he saw, he might be tempted to affirm that the essence of democracy is melodrama. Irving Babbitt

I'm obsessive about the kind of melodrama of getting through the days and trying to make them good and funny and a happy experience. But my feeling towards the fans is that they delivered me from darkness. Tom Baker

Turn Your Melodrama into a Mellow-Drama. Richard Carlson

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