Melodrama
Theatre where spoken lines alternate with or ride on orchestral music
Related
Melodrama in music theatre means speech with music: an actor speaks while the orchestra plays between or under the lines, following gesture and feeling. Rousseau's Pygmalion is an early example; the dungeon scene of Fidelio and the Wolf's Glen in Der Freischütz use it for tension.
In the nineteenth century the word also meant popular sensation drama, with clear villains, stage machinery and a score under the action; Pixérécourt's plays filled Paris. Film scoring later inherited the habit of music following action.
It is not sung opera, nor incidental music: incidental music works between the lines and in the entr'actes, while melodrama keeps music and speech locked together. A monodrama may be all melodrama, but melodrama needs only one speaker, not one performer.
Sources
- 情节剧的说白配乐传统、卢梭与十九世纪流行剧，参 The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, "Melodrama"；本文为原创表述
Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.