(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.
Tragedy
Definition:
(n.) A dramatic poem, composed in elevated style, representing a signal action performed by some person or persons, and having a fatal issue; that species of drama which represents the sad or terrible phases of character and life.
(n.) A fatal and mournful event; any event in which human lives are lost by human violence, more especially by unauthorized violence.
Example Sentences:
(1) Her story is an incredible tale of triumph over tragedy: a tormented childhood during China's Cultural Revolution, detention and forced exile after exposing female infanticide – then glittering success as the head of a major US technology firm.
(2) It is a tragedy that he abandoned Iraq, sacrificing the gains secured by American blood and treasure.
(3) The lesson, spelled out by Oak Creek's mayor, Steve Saffidi, was that it shouldn't have taken a tragedy for Sikhs, or anyone else, to find acceptance.
(4) Obama is expected to offer personal condolences to his counterpart Park Geun-Hye over the tragedy, but the South's unpredictable northern neighbour is set to dominate the agenda.
(5) The Australian prime minister and the Russian president discussed the Malaysia Airlines tragedy during a 15-minute meeting on the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit on Tuesday.
(6) The second tragedy to strike Jeremy was the death of his wife Caroline.
(7) Shavit’s new book, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel , has received plaudits from the cream of the liberal, American, political elite.
(8) Facebook Twitter Pinterest Global trade unions called the collapse ‘mass industrial homicide’, while Vogue magazine described it as ‘tragedy on an epic scale’.
(9) The deputy prime minister branded the treatment meted out to the four-year-old by his mother, Magdelena Luczak, and stepfather, Mariusz Krezolek, as evil and vile, but suggested it was up to the whole of society to stop such tragedies.
(10) Senator Edward Kennedy lived his life precisely at the crossroads of all that he encountered – at the intersection of statesmanship, of history, of moral purpose, of tragedy, of compromise.
(11) It’s a huge, huge tragedy.” Kortney Moore, 18, said she was in a writing class when a shot came through the window and hit the teacher in the head.
(12) Tragedy was averted because there was a little delay as the prayers did not commence in earnest and the bomb strapped to the body of the girl went off and killed her,” he added.
(13) In a therapeutic tragedy perhaps even more widespread than the thalidomide disaster, untold lives were lost between 1949 and 1958 through the administration of inappropriate doses of chloramphenicol to newborn infants.
(14) It comes two years after the BSC stripped another Vedanta subsidiary of a safety award after the Observer drew its attention to the firm's involvement in one of the worst industrial tragedies in India's recent history.
(15) A s the protests in Turkey continue , spare a thought for the man whose personal tragedy few have the grace to acknowledge – Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
(16) During his visit to Europe he did not speak at length on the subject of the shooting, but seemed more willing than Giuliani to distance the Dallas tragedy from the Black Lives Matter movement.
(17) But obviously if people have been injured or indeed killed that is a tragedy and our sympathies are with the victims and their families.” He added: “We never condone violence – whatever the cause.
(18) Sue Capon, who runs Brokerswood country park, said everyone was still coming to terms with the tragedy.
(19) They have taken a series of safety measures over the past decade aimed at preventing crowd crushes after tragedies such as the stampede in 2006, which resulted in 350 deaths, a building collapse in the same year which killed 76 and a stampede that killed more than 200 people in 2004.
(20) But the tragedy in Scotland is a reminder that public confidence – and even lives – are on the line too.