(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.
Recitative
Definition:
(n.) A species of musical recitation in which the words are delivered in a manner resembling that of ordinary declamation; also, a piece of music intended for such recitation; -- opposed to melisma.
(a.) Of or pertaining to recitation; intended for musical recitation or declamation; in the style or manner of recitative.
Example Sentences:
(1) When accused of muttering it while reciting Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Mo, during filming of BBC2s Top Gear, he said he had not, that he would absolutely never use "the most racist word of them all".
(2) For one day only, the criteria for success shift from the ability to do long division to the ability to do the long jump, a knack for reciting facts to a knack for running fast.
(3) As a central feature of every ceremony, Nepali shamans (jhãkris) publicly recite lengthy oral texts, whose meticulous memorization constitutes the core of shamanic training.
(4) These days large theatres such as the Met in New York still use the recitative, but most productions tend to opt for the original dialogue, while a few, including Sally Potter's production for ENO in 2007, attempt to make do without either.
(5) In fact, there are two – three if you count the recitation of the pledge of allegiance.
(6) He even recited Tennyson's poem to a classroom of Russian children in Moscow, possibly a tad insensitively, given that it was about an incident in the Crimean war, though they nodded politely.
(7) In the footage, published on the newspaper's website , Clarkson appears to recite the beginning of the children's nursery rhyme "Eeny, meeny, miny, moe..." before appearing to mumble: "Catch a nigger by his toe."
(8) In the unaired version – which was later passed to the Mirror – the presenter then appears to recite the children's counting rhyme and use the N-word under his breath before pointing at the Toyota and shrugging: "Toyota it is."
(9) Commuters streaming into the bustling streets of the capital Kuala Lumpur earlier in the morning were overwhelmingly black-clad, while state television aired recitations from the Qur’an and showed photos of the victims.
(10) There are no ahhs of amazement as though you’re a pet hamster who’s suddenly executed a triple backflip while reciting the spoken-word bit of Shake It Off .
(11) He could recite moral rules; he could even, when asked to do so in court, recite Kant's famous categorical imperative .
(12) Accessible to non-specialists, the system conveyed by these recitations acts to validate shamanic intervention as a significant and intelligible activity.
(13) At the time, it felt like a story I recited so I didn't go under.
(14) One woman turned from her seat to survey the crowd: “I think the whole town is here.” The meeting began only after men removed their farm hats and Stetsons to recite the Lord’s Prayer.
(15) It was delightful to explore the modernised, easier to navigate site and listen again to Tennyson reading his The Charge of the Light Brigade, Sylvia Plath reciting Parliament Hill Fields , Hillaire Beloc singing Tarantella .
(16) One female mummy is displayed with a translation of an offering inscription, which visitors will be invited to recite to ensure her food supply in the next world.
(17) The words recited with the eight strokes of the comb hint at the uneven path ahead: "First comb for luck, second for longevity, third for contentment, fourth for safety.
(18) Daniels is not a bad actor, but the show gives him nothing to do except recite Aaron Sorkin’s self-important lines in a self important voice.
(19) Evacuated to Bournemouth at the outbreak of war, Drummond went to hear the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and a recital by Kathleen Ferrier, whose biography he was to film 20 years later in what was probably his most successful television production.
(20) When you read, as a Swede, that we have the third highest number of reported cases of violence against women in the EU – 46% of the Swedish women surveyed had such experiences, just behind Denmark's 52% and Finland's 47% – it's almost instinctive to recite the reasons why this is actually a good thing.