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Webster 1913 Edition
Melodrama
Melˊo-dra′ma
,Noun.
[F.
mélodrame
, fr. Gr. μέλοσ
song + δρᾶμα
drama.] 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”