(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".
Example Sentences:
(1) Reith, “his dour handsome face scarred like that of a villain in a melodrama”, was “a strange shepherd for such a mixed, bohemian flock … he had under his aegis a bevy of ex-soldiers, ex-actors, ex-adventurers which … even a Dartmoor prison governor might have had difficulty in controlling”.
(2) Ian Hislop, editor of Private Eye, said Mr Carman would be remembered for turning "the courtroom into melodrama".
(3) Before the digital age, they created their own technology to make sound montages, taking ironic liberties with pastiche and parody, as in "Sugar-cane fields forever", or the exaggerated Latin melodrama of El Justiciero (The Avenger) They were influenced by concrete poetry and avant-garde music.
(4) Basing the film on Walter Lord's meticulously researched book (adapted by Ambler), Baker opted for a documentary approach that focused on the human interest without recourse to melodrama, making it both moving and exciting.
(5) While on television the US capital is fascinated by a glamorous, distorting mirror of itself: The West Wing (liberal fantasy), House of Cards (the devil as president) and Scandal (preposterous melodrama).
(6) Dallas had buckets of money, on and off screen, and buckets of melodrama.
(7) It's just that he gets ultra-stressed by things that many of us choose to ignore, and melodrama can ensue.
(8) Transposing the Brothers Grimm to 1920s Spain, he doffs his montera not only to European silent cinema of the period, but to bullfighting and flamenco, with an atmospheric Gothic melodrama that has lashings of humour – mostly provided by Maribel Verdú as the social-climbing evil stepmother with a penchant for S&M – bags of invention, and an expressive, flamenco-inflected score by Alfonso de Vilallonga.
(9) His other forte was as a 1950s director of widescreen colour melodramas often adapted from the fatter, racier bestsellers of the postwar paperback revolution, many of which have developed separate cults of their own.
(10) It took two weeks for him to address the issue publicly, while his wife Patience was accused of melodrama smacking of insincerity when she met mothers of the kidnapped girls.
(11) For many, France's elimination from the tournament after six days of melodrama in which obscenities were thrown, players went on strike and a coach walked out, came as something of a relief.
(12) A h, the many Proustian pleasures to be derived from a renewed acquaintance with Roy Ward Baker 's 1958 Titanic melodrama A Night To Remember ... Last seen by me on some wintry Sunday afternoon in the prepubescent early 1970s, probably in the same post-prandial time-slot where I first encountered The Cockleshell Heroes, Carve Her Name With Pride and The Colditz Story – the dull roar of British postwar self-congratulation on film.
(13) It was a difficult production – the director wanted it to be a slightly Edwardian melodrama and we couldn't get our heads around the concept.
(14) Despite a testament as harrowing as his, and for all its meticulous refusal of melodrama, the Holocaust has become subject to sneering scepticism – now outright denial, now the slower drip of devaluation and diminishment.
(15) For the life of me I cannot understand why it is somehow correct for all of your privacy to be invaded for a commercial purpose and not allow me to do it to save your life.” Irvine added: “Is that dramatic enough?” The Victorian Labor senator Jacinta Collins said: “It’s an amusing defence because I think you’ll find most people are concerned about the other also.” Ludlam said: “I think it’s probably heading towards melodrama rather than just drama.” 'Not seeking a big brother arrangement' During the Senate hearing Irvine also laid out the case for a mandatory data retention scheme forcing telecommunications providers to store customer data for two years.
(16) Twenty-five years ago, soap operas were delivery systems for melodrama, cliffhangers, women's issues, comedy and social critique, and, best of all, white-knuckle rides on the narrative express.
(17) The best hour records lack melodrama, but are marked instead by a constantly building sense of history in the making as the raw statistics make it obvious what is coming.
(18) McDowell, a film-maker in his own right, collaborated with Kuchar on several movies, as an actor in Siamese Twin Pinheads (1972), The Sunshine Sisters (1972) and The Devil's Cleavage (1975), a 130-minute recreation of 1940s and 50s black-and-white melodramas.
(19) But disillusionment is, though often painful – and Beware of Pity has moments of high melodrama that have the power to make one put one's free hand over one's mouth as one reads – a very necessary process, and the stripping away of illusions was, after all, one of the abiding aims of the Freudian project.
(20) They approached the cold war as melodrama and McCarthyism by way of allegory.
Melodramatic
Definition:
(a.) Of or pertaining to melodrama; like or suitable to a melodrama; unnatural in situation or action.
Example Sentences:
(1) Ron Atkinson described one trip to Anfield as like going into the Vietnam War and, if that sounds melodramatic all these years on, his team had just been attacked with tear gas.
(2) In 1850 you could see Benjamin West’s ever popular vision of the apocalypse, Death on a Pale Horse , riding melodramatically back into view on Broadway for the fourth time in as many years; and a gallery of Rembrandts at Niblo’s theatre, where Charles Blondin once walked a tightrope.
(3) Old Trafford was once a Theatre of Dreams but now setting for a tragedy , melodramatics Russell Brand.
(4) The satirists were completely disregarded as news producers continued to make ever more melodramatic, repetitive and graphically absurd programmes.
(5) Adaptations Don Juan and The Corsair were both filmed in melodramatic black and white; the Byronic hero spawned a thousand celluloid imitations - Gabriel Byrne is convincingly Byronic as Byron in Ken Russell's hallucinogenic and slightly laughable Gothic (1986).
(6) A suspicion lingers among some that gothic answers only to the teenager's melodramatic instincts ( TS Eliot diagnosed a taste for Edgar Allan Poe as fatally adolescent), its terrors as ultimately unserious as saying "Boo!".
(7) I was making lyrics that would rhyme or flow or capture a mood, and looking back I think: ‘Why was I doing that?’ I don’t have a particularly melodramatic or exceptional life but at least I can sing about the things that are happening in my life and it feels so much better and more honest and more meaningful.” While hardly startling territory for a singer-songwriter, the juxtaposition of Dan’s wavering delivery with stirring dance rhythms functions as a kind of emotional double whammy.
(8) [The film] aches for more depth and warmth and humour, but this is spectacular sci-fi – huge, operatic, melodramatic, impressive.
(9) Without being melodramatic about it, I say, you are holding in your hands an example of the price that is paid for being a professional footballer at the top of his game.
(10) Lord Home who has died at the age of 92, was in manner unobtrusive and undemanding yet reached the height of his political career, first as foreign secretary and next as prime minister, in melodramatic circumstances.
(11) And then along came a Greek deal, and now a US debt deal, and you might presume I had been prematurely melodramatic.
(12) But the prosecution described his testimony as “Oscar-worthy” and said it amounted to a “melodramatic denial” of his sexual proclivities.
(13) The proximity of one of the Kremlin towers to the spot where Nemtsov was shot in the back is darkly melodramatic, and the symbolism could not be clearer.
(14) "In some senses they have reacted in a slightly melodramatic manner.
(15) That melodramatic, all-over-the-shop approach to vocal melody just screamed “hippy” at me, and seemed to be the aural equivalent of shawls, beads, headdresses and candles, all of which I suspected Kate Bush was wearing or surrounded by while she recorded the vocal.
(16) Trierweiler is forever dashing into bathrooms and collapsing while Hollande is an unfeeling prig who either ignores her or tells her to stop being so melodramatic.
(17) Rosa portrays himself melodramatically, and with a gnomic tablet saying that silence is the best policy.
(18) While he recognises that this may sound melodramatic, he points out that this is precisely what has happened with previous decisions to tighten eligibility for other disability benefits.
(19) "Sometimes the smallest little detail can change the course of history," he says, melodramatically.
(20) He was the first foreign secretary for 20 years to be a member of the House of Lords he was the first (and surely last) man ever to disclaim six peerages to become prime minister and he was responsible for arranging that his successor should be chosen by secret ballot held among Conservative members of the House of Commons, with equally melodramatic consequences.