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Melodrama

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Webster Dictionary
• Melodrama
Encyclopedias
1911 Encyclopedia Britannica
• Melodrama
The Nuttall Encyclopedia
• Melodrama

(n.) 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".