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89-498: In scholarly and historical musical contexts, melodramas are Victorian dramas in which orchestral music or song was used to accompany the action. The term melodrama is now also applied to stage performances without incidental music, novels, films, television, and radio broadcasts. In modern contexts, the term melodrama is generally pejorative, as it suggests that the work in question lacks subtlety, character development, or both. By extension, language or behavior that resembles melodrama

178-577: A Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the world's oldest recorded living language . Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now-extinct Anatolian languages . The Greek language is conventionally divided into the following periods: In the modern era, the Greek language entered

267-420: A "victory over repression". Late Victorian and Edwardian melodrama combined a conscious focus on realism in stage sets and props with "anti-realism" in character and plot. Melodrama in this period strove for "credible accuracy in the depiction of incredible, extraordinary" scenes. Novelist Wilkie Collins is noted for his attention to accurate detail (e.g., of legal matters) in his works, no matter how sensational

356-577: A basis for coinages: anthropology , photography , telephony , isomer , biomechanics , cinematography , etc. Together with Latin words , they form the foundation of international scientific and technical vocabulary ; for example, all words ending in -logy ('discourse'). There are many English words of Greek origin . Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European language family. The ancient language most closely related to it may be ancient Macedonian , which, by most accounts,

445-508: A faster, more convenient cursive writing style with the use of ink and quill . The Greek alphabet consists of 24 letters, each with an uppercase ( majuscule ) and lowercase ( minuscule ) form. The letter sigma has an additional lowercase form (ς) used in the final position of a word: In addition to the letters, the Greek alphabet features a number of diacritical signs : three different accent marks ( acute , grave , and circumflex ), originally denoting different shapes of pitch accent on

534-958: A fusion of the Hispanic and Asian cultures) the Philippines . Expatriate communities in the diaspora of these countries give viewership a global market. Melodrama films are a subgenre of drama films characterized by plots that appeal to the heightened emotions of the audience . Melodramatic films commonly use plots that involve crises of human emotion, failed romance or friendship , strained familial situations, tragedy , illness , neuroses , or emotional and physical hardship . The stock characters present in melodrama films include victims, couples, virtuous and heroic characters, and suffering protagonists (usually heroines ). These characters are faced with tremendous social pressures, threats, repression, fears, improbable events or difficulties with friends, community , work , lovers, or family. Following

623-400: A genre for authors and composers of lesser stature (probably also why virtually no realizations of the genre are still remembered) - though there are examples by Robert Schumann ( Ballads for Declaration , 1850s) and Richard Strauss for narrator and piano ( Enoch Arden (1897). The English composer Stanley Hawley made many such settings, some of which were performed at the first season of

712-590: A lesser extent, in the Western Mediterranean in and around colonies such as Massalia , Monoikos , and Mainake . It was also used as the official language of government and religion in the Christian Nubian kingdoms , for most of their history. Greek, in its modern form, is the official language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population. It is also the official language of Cyprus (nominally alongside Turkish ) and

801-400: A limited but productive system of compounding and a rich inflectional system. Although its morphological categories have been fairly stable over time, morphological changes are present throughout, particularly in the nominal and verbal systems. The major change in the nominal morphology since the classical stage was the disuse of the dative case (its functions being largely taken over by

890-444: A means of setting Czech declamation correctly: his melodramas Štědrý den (1874) and Vodník (1883) use rhythmic durations to specify the alignment of spoken word and accompaniment. Fibich's main achievement was Hippodamie (1888–1891), a trilogy of full-evening staged melodramas on the texts of Jaroslav Vrchlický with multiple actors and orchestra, composed in an advanced Wagnerian musical style. Josef Suk 's main contributions at

979-459: A mixed syllable structure, permitting complex syllabic onsets but very restricted codas. It has only oral vowels and a fairly stable set of consonantal contrasts . The main phonological changes occurred during the Hellenistic and Roman period (see Koine Greek phonology for details): In all its stages, the morphology of Greek shows an extensive set of productive derivational affixes ,

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1068-581: A reflection of issues brought up by the French Revolution , the Industrial Revolution and the shift to modernization. Many melodramas were about a middle-class young woman who experienced unwanted sexual advances from an aristocratic miscreant, the sexual assault being a metaphor for class conflict. The melodrama reflected post-Industrial Revolution anxieties of the middle class, who was afraid of both aristocratic power brokers and

1157-427: A scene within a play or an opera. It was only later, in the nineteenth century, that the term lost its association with music and began to be used for plays with sentimental and sensational plots typical of popular Victorian drama . The earliest known examples of melodrama are scenes in J. E. Eberlin's Latin school play Sigismundus (1753). The first full melodrama was Jean-Jacques Rousseau 's monodrama Pygmalion ,

1246-402: A servant of the aged parent engaged in a sensational plot featuring themes of love and murder. Often the good but not very clever hero is duped by a scheming villain, who has eyes on the damsel in distress until fate intervenes at the end to ensure the triumph of good over evil. Two central features were the coup de théàtre, or reversal of fortune, and the claptrap: a back-to-the-wall oration by

1335-460: A state of diglossia : the coexistence of vernacular and archaizing written forms of the language. What came to be known as the Greek language question was a polarization between two competing varieties of Modern Greek: Dimotiki , the vernacular form of Modern Greek proper, and Katharevousa , meaning 'purified', a compromise between Dimotiki and Ancient Greek developed in the early 19th century that

1424-559: Is also frequently used in Spanish zarzuela , both in the 19th and 20th centuries, and continued also to be used as a "special effect" in opera, for instance Richard Strauss 's Die Frau ohne Schatten . In Paris, the 19th century saw a flourishing of melodrama in the many theatres that were located on the popular Boulevard du Crime , especially in the Gaîté . All this came to an end, however, when most of these theatres were demolished during

1513-407: Is available online, complete with several melodramas, for instance, No. 12 found here. A few operettas exhibit melodrama in the sense of music played under spoken dialogue, for instance, Gilbert and Sullivan 's Ruddigore (itself a parody of melodramas in the modern sense) has a short "melodrame" (reduced to dialogue alone in many productions) in the second act; Jacques Offenbach 's Orpheus in

1602-731: Is often called melodramatic; this use is nearly always pejorative. The term was first used in English in 1784 (in 1782 as melo drame ) and came from the French word mélodrame ( c.  1772 ), which was itself derived from Greek μέλος ("song" or "music") and French drame ("drama"). The relationship of melodrama and realism is complex. Protagonists of melodramatic works may be ordinary (and hence realistically drawn) people who are caught up in extraordinary events or highly exaggerated and unrealistic characters. With regard to its high emotions and dramatic rhetoric, melodrama represents

1691-929: Is sometimes called aljamiado , as when Romance languages are written in the Arabic alphabet. Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Greek: Transcription of the example text into Latin alphabet : Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English: Proto-Greek Mycenaean Ancient Koine Medieval Modern Georg Benda Georg Anton Benda (Czech: Jiří Antonín Benda ; 30 June 1722 – 6 November 1795)

1780-708: Is still used internationally for the writing of Ancient Greek . In Greek, the question mark is written as the English semicolon, while the functions of the colon and semicolon are performed by a raised point (•), known as the ano teleia ( άνω τελεία ). In Greek the comma also functions as a silent letter in a handful of Greek words, principally distinguishing ό,τι ( ó,ti , 'whatever') from ότι ( óti , 'that'). Ancient Greek texts often used scriptio continua ('continuous writing'), which means that ancient authors and scribes would write word after word with no spaces or punctuation between words to differentiate or mark boundaries. Boustrophedon , or bi-directional text,

1869-632: Is to modern spoken English ". Greek is spoken today by at least 13 million people, principally in Greece and Cyprus along with a sizable Greek-speaking minority in Albania near the Greek-Albanian border. A significant percentage of Albania's population has knowledge of the Greek language due in part to the Albanian wave of immigration to Greece in the 1980s and '90s and the Greek community in

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1958-562: The British Overseas Territory of Akrotiri and Dhekelia (alongside English ). Because of the membership of Greece and Cyprus in the European Union, Greek is one of the organization's 24 official languages . Greek is recognized as a minority language in Albania, and used co-officially in some of its municipalities, in the districts of Gjirokastër and Sarandë . It is also an official minority language in

2047-657: The European canon . Greek is also the language in which many of the foundational texts in science and philosophy were originally composed. The New Testament of the Christian Bible was also originally written in Greek. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world , the Greek texts and Greek societies of antiquity constitute the objects of study of the discipline of Classics . During antiquity , Greek

2136-554: The Henry Wood Proms in London. It was probably also at this time when the connotation of cheap overacting first became associated with the term. As a cross-over genre-mixing narration and chamber music, it was eclipsed nearly overnight by a single composition: Schoenberg 's Pierrot Lunaire (1912), where Sprechgesang was used instead of rhythmically spoken words, and which took a freer and more imaginative course regarding

2225-516: The Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ), but little definitive evidence has been found. In addition, Albanian has also been considered somewhat related to Greek and Armenian, and it has been proposed that they all form a higher-order subgroup along with other extinct languages of the ancient Balkans; this higher-order subgroup is usually termed Palaeo-Balkan , and Greek has a central position in it. Linear B , attested as early as

2314-717: The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane and Lisle's Tennis Court in Lincoln's Inn Fields , the latter of which moved to the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden in 1720 (now the Royal Opera House ). The two patent theatres closed in the summer months. To fill the gap, the Theatre Royal, Haymarket became a third patent theatre in London in 1766. Further letters patent were eventually granted to one theatre in each of several other English towns and cities. Other theatres presented dramas that were underscored with music and, borrowing

2403-780: The United Kingdom , and throughout the European Union , especially in Germany . Historically, significant Greek-speaking communities and regions were found throughout the Eastern Mediterranean , in what are today Southern Italy , Turkey , Cyprus , Syria , Lebanon , Israel , Palestine , Egypt , and Libya ; in the area of the Black Sea , in what are today Turkey, Bulgaria , Romania , Ukraine , Russia , Georgia , Armenia , and Azerbaijan ; and, to

2492-468: The genitive ). The verbal system has lost the infinitive , the synthetically -formed future, and perfect tenses and the optative mood . Many have been replaced by periphrastic ( analytical ) forms. Pronouns show distinctions in person (1st, 2nd, and 3rd), number (singular, dual , and plural in the ancient language; singular and plural alone in later stages), and gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter), and decline for case (from six cases in

2581-566: The plot prerogative. Within the context of the Czech National Revival , the melodrama took on a specifically nationalist meaning for Czech artists, beginning roughly in the 1870s and continuing through the First Czechoslovak Republic of the interwar period. This new understanding of the melodrama stemmed primarily from such nineteenth-century scholars and critics as Otakar Hostinský , who considered

2670-420: The rebuilding of Paris by Baron Haussmann in 1862. By the end of the 19th century, the term melodrama had nearly exclusively narrowed down to a specific genre of salon entertainment: more or less rhythmically spoken words (often poetry) – not sung, sometimes more or less enacted, at least with some dramatic structure or plot – synchronized to the accompaniment of music (usually piano). It was looked down on as

2759-417: The syntax of Greek have remained constant: verbs agree with their subject only, the use of the surviving cases is largely intact (nominative for subjects and predicates, accusative for objects of most verbs and many prepositions, genitive for possessors), articles precede nouns, adpositions are largely prepositional, relative clauses follow the noun they modify and relative pronouns are clause-initial. However,

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2848-603: The 1930s until the late 1960s, Hays Code restrictions on the inclusion of "licentious" content in films would restrict the portrayal of female desire in the American film melodrama. During the 1940s, the British Gainsborough melodramas were successful with audiences. In the 1950s, films by director Douglas Sirk , such as All That Heaven Allows (1955) and Written on the Wind (1956), are representative of

2937-566: The 20th century on), especially from French and English, are typically not inflected; other modern borrowings are derived from Albanian , South Slavic ( Macedonian / Bulgarian ) and Eastern Romance languages ( Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian ). Greek words have been widely borrowed into other languages, including English. Example words include: mathematics , physics , astronomy , democracy , philosophy , athletics , theatre, rhetoric , baptism , evangelist , etc. Moreover, Greek words and word elements continue to be productive as

3026-449: The French term, called it melodrama to get around the restriction. The Theatres Act 1843 finally allowed all theatres to play drama. In the early 19th century, opera's influence led to musical overtures and incidental music for many plays. In 1820, Franz Schubert wrote a melodrama, Die Zauberharfe ("The Magic Harp"), setting music behind the play written by G. von Hofmann. It was unsuccessful, like all Schubert's theatre ventures, but

3115-659: The Gothic, the next popular subgenre was the nautical melodrama, pioneered by Douglas Jerrold in his Black-Eyed Susan (1829). Other nautical melodramas included Jerrold's The Mutiny at the Nore (1830) and The Red Rover (1829) by Edward Fitzball (Rowell 1953). Melodramas based on urban situations became popular in the mid-nineteenth century, including The Streets of London (1864) by Dion Boucicault ; and Lost in London (1867) by Watts Phillips, while prison melodrama, temperance melodrama, and imperialist melodrama also appeared –

3204-544: The Greek alphabet since approximately the 9th century BC. It was created by modifying the Phoenician alphabet , with the innovation of adopting certain letters to represent the vowels. The variant of the alphabet in use today is essentially the late Ionic variant, introduced for writing classical Attic in 403 BC. In classical Greek, as in classical Latin, only upper-case letters existed. The lower-case Greek letters were developed much later by medieval scribes to permit

3293-549: The Greek language was the Cypriot syllabary (also a descendant of Linear A via the intermediate Cypro-Minoan syllabary ), which is closely related to Linear B but uses somewhat different syllabic conventions to represent phoneme sequences. The Cypriot syllabary is attested in Cyprus from the 11th century BC until its gradual abandonment in the late Classical period, in favor of the standard Greek alphabet. Greek has been written in

3382-593: The Indo-European language family. It is native to Greece , Cyprus , Italy (in Calabria and Salento ), southern Albania , and other regions of the Balkans , Caucasus , the Black Sea coast, Asia Minor , and the Eastern Mediterranean . It has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning at least 3,400 years of written records. Its writing system is the Greek alphabet , which has been used for approximately 2,800 years; previously, Greek

3471-585: The Rise of English Melodrama.” Essays in Romanticism . 29.1 (April 2022): 1-31. Williams, Carolyn, ed. ‘’The Cambridge Companion to English Melodrama.’’ University of Cambridge Press, 2018. Greek language Greek ( Modern Greek : Ελληνικά , romanized :  Elliniká , [eliniˈka] ; Ancient Greek : Ἑλληνική , romanized :  Hellēnikḗ ) is an Indo-European language, constituting an independent Hellenic branch within

3560-490: The Soul (1974). The 1980s saw a resurgence in American "women's" melodramas such as Terms of Endearment (1983), Beaches (1988), and Steel Magnolias (1989). On television, the miniseries was a popular format for lavish, female-centric melodramas such as Scruples (1980), Lace (1984), and Sins (1986). Melodramas like the 1990s TV Moment of Truth movies targeted audiences of American women by portraying

3649-575: The Underworld opens with a melodrama delivered by the character of "Public Opinion"; and other pieces from operetta and musicals may be considered melodramas, such as the "Recit and Minuet" in Gilbert and Sullivan's The Sorcerer . As an example from the American musical, several long speeches in Lerner and Loewe 's Brigadoon are delivered over an accompaniment of evocative music. The technique

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3738-907: The Villain: Six English and American Melodramas. Benjamin Blom, 1967. Booth, Michael, ed. ‘’The Lights O’ London and Other Victorian Plays.’’ Oxford University Press, 1995. Bratton, Jacky, Jim Cook, and Christine Gledhill, eds. Melodrama: Stage, Picture, Screen. British Film Institute, 1994. Buckley, Matthew S. ‘’Tragedy Walks the Streets: The French Revolution and the Making of Modern Drama.’’ The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. Hambridge, Katherine, and Jonathan Hicks, eds. ‘’The Melodramatic Moment: Music and Theatrical Culture, 1790-1820. University of Chicago Press, 2018. Robinson, Terry F. “Deaf Education and

3827-733: The Western world. However, it is still widely popular in other regions, particularly in Asia and in Hispanic countries. Melodrama is one of the main genres (along with romance, comedy and fantasy) used in Latin American television dramas (telenovelas), particularly in Venezuela , Mexico , Colombia , Argentina and Brazil , and in Asian television dramas, South Korea , Japan , Taiwan , China , Pakistan , Thailand , India , Turkey and (in

3916-404: The acute during the late 20th century, and it has only been retained in typography . After the writing reform of 1982, most diacritics are no longer used. Since then, Greek has been written mostly in the simplified monotonic orthography (or monotonic system), which employs only the acute accent and the diaeresis. The traditional system, now called the polytonic orthography (or polytonic system),

4005-479: The arrival of Proto-Greeks, some documented in Mycenaean texts ; they include a large number of Greek toponyms . The form and meaning of many words have changed. Loanwords (words of foreign origin) have entered the language, mainly from Latin, Venetian , and Turkish . During the older periods of Greek, loanwords into Greek acquired Greek inflections, thus leaving only a foreign root word. Modern borrowings (from

4094-580: The characteristics of melodrama, his best-known work The Woman in White being regarded by some modern critics as "the most brilliant melodrama of the period". The villain is often the central character in melodrama, and crime was a favorite theme. This included dramatizations of the murderous careers of Burke and Hare , Sweeney Todd (first featured in The String of Pearls (1847) by George Dibdin Pitt ),

4183-529: The context of a private home. Its intended audience is a female spectator, but a male viewer can also enjoy its presentation of resolved tensions in a home. Melodrama generally looks back at ideal, nostalgic eras, emphasizing "forbidden longings". Melodrama was associated with the rise of capitalism in the 19th century. French romantic drama and sentimental novels were popular in both England and France. These dramas and novels focused on moral codes in regard to family life, love, and marriage, and they can be seen as

4272-796: The country. Prior to the Greco-Turkish War and the resulting population exchange in 1923 a very large population of Greek-speakers also existed in Turkey , though very few remain today. A small Greek-speaking community is also found in Bulgaria near the Greek-Bulgarian border. Greek is also spoken worldwide by the sizable Greek diaspora which has notable communities in the United States , Australia , Canada , South Africa , Chile , Brazil , Argentina , Russia , Ukraine ,

4361-441: The dative led to a rise of prepositional indirect objects (and the use of the genitive to directly mark these as well). Ancient Greek tended to be verb-final, but neutral word order in the modern language is VSO or SVO. Modern Greek inherits most of its vocabulary from Ancient Greek, which in turn is an Indo-European language, but also includes a number of borrowings from the languages of the populations that inhabited Greece before

4450-440: The days of Ludwig van Beethoven ( Egmont ) and Franz Schubert ( Rosamunde ). (This type of often-lavish production is now mostly limited to film (see film score ) due to the cost of hiring an orchestra. Modern recording technology is producing a certain revival of the practice in theatre, but not on the former scale.) A particularly complete version of this form, Sullivan's incidental music to Tennyson's The Foresters ,

4539-565: The development of the German melodramas, a form of musical stage entertainment which influenced Mozart . In 1774, the Swiss-born director Abel Seyler 's theatrical company arrived in Gotha, and Seyler commissioned Benda to write several successful melodramas, including Ariadne auf Naxos , Medea and Pygmalion . Ariadne auf Naxos is generally considered his best work. At its debut in 1775,

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4628-460: The duke allowed Benda to take a study trip to Italy in 1764. He returned to Gotha in 1766, and devoted himself to composition. In all, he wrote about ten operas , several operettas , and the melodramas Ariadne auf Naxos , Medea and Almansor und Nadine . In 1778 he resigned his position and visited Hamburg, Vienna and other cities, and finally settled at the little hamlet of Köstritz . Benda's most important contribution lies in

4717-528: The earliest forms attested to four in the modern language). Nouns, articles, and adjectives show all the distinctions except for a person. Both attributive and predicative adjectives agree with the noun. The inflectional categories of the Greek verb have likewise remained largely the same over the course of the language's history but with significant changes in the number of distinctions within each category and their morphological expression. Greek verbs have synthetic inflectional forms for: Many aspects of

4806-444: The effects of alcoholism , domestic violence , rape and the like. Typical of the 90's melodrama is Anjelica Huston 's 1999 film Agnes Browne . Todd Haynes ' films Far from Heaven (2002), Carol (2015), and May December (2023) are more recent takes on the melodrama. Contemporary director Pedro Almodovar has also taken many inspirations from the melodramatic genre and directors like Sirk. Booth, Michael, ed. ‘’Hiss

4895-412: The extent that one can speak of a new language emerging. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than a foreign language. It is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, " Homeric Greek is probably closer to Demotic than 12-century Middle English

4984-430: The film melodrama: those with a female patient, a maternal figure, an "impossible love", and the paranoid melodrama. Most film melodramas from the 1930s and 1940s, at the time known as "weepies" or "tearjerkers", were adaptations of women's fiction, such as romance novels and historical romances. Drawing from a shared history with women's fiction, melodramatic films often concentrate on female perspectives and desires. From

5073-406: The fourth quarter of the 18th century. Georg Benda was particularly successful with his duodramas Ariadne auf Naxos (1775) and Medea (1775). The sensational success of Benda's melodramas led others to compose similar works. Mozart, for example, spoke approvingly of Benda's music and later used two long melodramatic monologues in his opera Zaide (1780). Later and better-known examples of

5162-510: The genre to be a uniquely "Czech" contribution to music history (based on the national origins of Georg Benda , whose melodramas had nevertheless been in German). Such sentiments provoked a large number of Czech composers to produce melodramas based on Czech romantic poetry, such as the Kytice of Karel Jaromír Erben . The romantic composer Zdeněk Fibich in particular championed the genre as

5251-676: The genre. Many later melodramatic filmmakers cite Sirk and his works as significant influences. In the 1970s, Rainer Werner Fassbinder , who was influenced by Sirk, contributed to the genre by engaging with issues within the cultural subconscious, addressing class in The Merchant of Four Seasons (1971) and Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven (1975), sexual orientation and codependency in The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972) and racism, xenophobia, and ageism in Fear Eats

5340-473: The hero which forces the audience to applaud. English melodrama evolved from the tradition of populist drama established during the Middle Ages by mystery and morality plays , under influences from Italian commedia dell'arte as well as German Sturm und Drang drama and Parisian melodrama of the post-Revolutionary period. A notable French melodramatist was Pixérécourt whose La Femme à deux maris

5429-466: The impoverished working class "mob". Melodrama arose in the second half of the 18th century as a genre intermediate between play and opera. It combined spoken recitation with short pieces of accompanying music. Music and spoken dialogue typically alternated in such works, although the music was sometimes also used to accompany pantomime . If there is one actor, the term monodrama may be used; if there are two— duodrama . It also sometimes appeared as

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5518-449: The language show both conservative and innovative tendencies across the entire attestation of the language from the ancient to the modern period. The division into conventional periods is, as with all such periodizations, relatively arbitrary, especially because, in all periods, Ancient Greek has enjoyed high prestige, and the literate borrowed heavily from it. Across its history, the syllabic structure of Greek has varied little: Greek shows

5607-467: The late 15th century BC, was the first script used to write Greek. It is basically a syllabary , which was finally deciphered by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick in the 1950s (its precursor, Linear A , has not been deciphered and most likely encodes a non-Greek language). The language of the Linear B texts, Mycenaean Greek , is the earliest known form of Greek. Another similar system used to write

5696-478: The latter typically featuring the three categories of the 'good' native, the brave but wicked native, and the treacherous native. The sensation novels of the 1860s, and 1870s not only provided fertile material for melodramatic adaptations but are melodramatic in their own right. A notable example of this genre is Lady Audley's Secret by Elizabeth Braddon adapted, in two different versions, by George Roberts and C.H. Hazlewood. The novels of Wilkie Collins have

5785-452: The many other countries of the Greek diaspora . Greek roots have been widely used for centuries and continue to be widely used to coin new words in other languages; Greek and Latin are the predominant sources of international scientific vocabulary . Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC, or possibly earlier. The earliest written evidence is

5874-543: The melodrama genre was at the time a popular one. In an age of underpaid musicians, many 19th-century plays in London had an orchestra in the pit. In 1826, Felix Mendelssohn wrote his well-known overture to Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream , and later supplied the play with incidental music. In Verdi 's La Traviata , Violetta receives a letter from Alfredo's father where he writes that Alfredo now knows why she parted from him and that he forgives her ("Teneste la promessa..."). In her speaking voice, she intones

5963-731: The melodramatic style in operas are the grave-digging scene in Beethoven's Fidelio (1805) and the incantation scene in Weber's Der Freischütz (1821). After the English Restoration of Charles II in 1660 lifted the Puritan ban on theatre, most British theatres were prohibited from performing "serious" drama but were permitted to show comedy or plays with music. Charles II issued letters patent to permit only two London theatre companies to perform "serious" drama. These were

6052-465: The morphological changes also have their counterparts in the syntax, and there are also significant differences between the syntax of the ancient and that of the modern form of the language . Ancient Greek made great use of participial constructions and of constructions involving the infinitive, and the modern variety lacks the infinitive entirely (employing a raft of new periphrastic constructions instead) and uses participles more restrictively. The loss of

6141-474: The murder of Maria Marten in the Red Barn and the bizarre exploits of Spring Heeled Jack . The misfortunes of a discharged prisoner are the theme of the sensational The Ticket-of-Leave Man (1863) by Tom Taylor . Early silent films, such as The Perils of Pauline had similar themes. Later, after silent films were superseded by the 'talkies', stage actor Tod Slaughter , at the age of 50, transferred to

6230-596: The opera received enthusiastic reviews in Germany and afterwards, in the whole of Europe, with music critics calling attention to its originality, sweetness, and ingenious execution. Besides that he wrote many instrumental pieces including many sinfonias, keyboard sonatas, keyboard concertos, violin concertos and a smaller number of trio sonatas, violin sonatas and flute sonatas. Benda also wrote music for masonic rituals. Benda died in Köstritz, Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg , at

6319-402: The plot. Melodramas focus on a victim. For example, a melodrama may present a person’s struggle between good and evil choices, such as a man being encouraged to leave his family by an "evil temptress". Stock characters include the "fallen woman", the single mother, the orphan, and the male who is struggling with the impacts of the modern world. The melodrama examines family and social issues in

6408-478: The position of second violinist in the chapel of Berlin . The following year Benda was summoned to Potsdam as a composer and arranger for his older brother Franz , himself an illustrious composer and violinist. Seven years later, in 1749, he entered the service of the Duke of Gotha as Kapellmeister , where he constantly cultivated his talents for composition , specializing in religious music. A stipend from

6497-643: The regions of Apulia and Calabria in Italy. In the framework of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages , Greek is protected and promoted officially as a regional and minority language in Armenia, Hungary , Romania, and Ukraine. It is recognized as a minority language and protected in Turkey by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne . The phonology , morphology , syntax , and vocabulary of

6586-461: The screen the Victorian melodramas in which he had played a villain in his earlier theatrical career. These films, which include Maria Marten or Murder in the Red Barn (1935), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1936) and The Ticket of Leave Man (1937) are a unique record of a bygone art-form. Classic melodrama is less common than it used to be on television and in movies in

6675-530: The stage plays of the Osvobozené divadlo as melodrama (most notably the opening prologue of the anti-Fascist farce Osel a stín (1933), delivered by the character of Dionysus in bolero rhythm). Czech melodramas' practice tapered off after the Nazi Protectorate . The Victorian stage melodrama featured six stock characters : the hero, the villain, the heroine, an aged parent, a sidekick, and

6764-437: The stressed vowel; the so-called breathing marks ( rough and smooth breathing ), originally used to signal presence or absence of word-initial /h/; and the diaeresis , used to mark the full syllabic value of a vowel that would otherwise be read as part of a diphthong. These marks were introduced during the course of the Hellenistic period. Actual usage of the grave in handwriting saw a rapid decline in favor of uniform usage of

6853-573: The text of which was written in 1762; it was first staged in Lyon in 1770. Rousseau composed the overture and an Andante, but the bulk of the music was composed by Horace Coignet . A different musical setting of Rousseau's Pygmalion by Anton Schweitzer was performed in Weimar in 1772, and Goethe wrote of it approvingly in Dichtung und Wahrheit . Some 30 other monodramas were produced in Germany in

6942-639: The turn of the century include melodramas for two-stage plays by Julius Zeyer : Radúz a Mahulena (1898) and Pod Jabloní (1901), both of which had a long performance history. Following the examples of Fibich and Suk, many other Czech composers set melodramas as stand-alone works based on the poetry of the National Revival, among them Karel Kovařovic , Otakar Ostrčil , Ladislav Vycpálek , Otakar Jeremiáš , Emil Axman, and Jan Zelinka. Vítězslav Novák included portions of melodrama in his 1923 opera Lucerna , and Jaroslav Ježek composed key scenes for

7031-401: The typical melodramatic format, the characters work through their difficulties and surmount the problems. A common point of plot tension sees characters feeling trapped by the typical melodramatic of the domestic sphere of the home or small town. Filmmakers often add flashbacks to expand the otherwise constant settings of melodramatic films. Feminists have noted four categories of themes in

7120-417: The words of what is written, while the orchestra recapitulates the music of their first love from Act I: this is technically melodrama. In a few moments, Violetta bursts into a passionate despairing aria ("Addio, del passato"): this is opera again. In a similar manner, Victorians often added "incidental music" under the dialogue to a pre-existing play, although this style of composition was already practiced in

7209-817: Was a composer , violinist and Kapellmeister of the classical period from the Kingdom of Bohemia . Born into a family of notable musicians in Old Benatek (today Benátky nad Jizerou ), Bohemia , he studied at the Piarist Gymnasium (grammar school) in Kosmanos and at the Jesuit Gymnasium in Gitschin from 1735 to 1742. Benda was 19 when Frederick the Great bestowed upon him in 1741

7298-574: Was a distinct dialect of Greek itself. Aside from the Macedonian question, current consensus regards Phrygian as the closest relative of Greek, since they share a number of phonological, morphological and lexical isoglosses , with some being exclusive between them. Scholars have proposed a Graeco-Phrygian subgroup out of which Greek and Phrygian originated. Among living languages, some Indo-Europeanists suggest that Greek may be most closely related to Armenian (see Graeco-Armenian ) or

7387-557: Was also used in Ancient Greek. Greek has occasionally been written in the Latin script , especially in areas under Venetian rule or by Greek Catholics . The term Frankolevantinika / Φραγκολεβαντίνικα applies when the Latin script is used to write Greek in the cultural ambit of Catholicism (because Frankos / Φράγκος is an older Greek term for West-European dating to when most of (Roman Catholic Christian) West Europe

7476-556: Was by far the most widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world . It eventually became the official language of the Byzantine Empire and developed into Medieval Greek . In its modern form , Greek is the official language of Greece and Cyprus and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union . It is spoken by at least 13.5 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey , and

7565-430: Was recorded in writing systems such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary . The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin , Cyrillic , Coptic , Gothic , and many other writing systems. The Greek language holds a very important place in the history of the Western world. Beginning with the epics of Homer , ancient Greek literature includes many works of lasting importance in

7654-580: Was under the control of the Frankish Empire ). Frankochiotika / Φραγκοχιώτικα (meaning 'Catholic Chiot') alludes to the significant presence of Catholic missionaries based on the island of Chios . Additionally, the term Greeklish is often used when the Greek language is written in a Latin script in online communications. The Latin script is nowadays used by the Greek-speaking communities of Southern Italy . The Yevanic dialect

7743-637: Was used for literary and official purposes in the newly formed Greek state. In 1976, Dimotiki was declared the official language of Greece, after having incorporated features of Katharevousa and thus giving birth to Standard Modern Greek , used today for all official purposes and in education . The historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of the Greek language are often emphasized. Although Greek has undergone morphological and phonological changes comparable to those seen in other languages, never since classical antiquity has its cultural, literary, and orthographic tradition been interrupted to

7832-526: Was very popular. The first English play to be called a melodrama or 'melodrame' was A Tale of Mystery (1802) by Thomas Holcroft . This was an example of the Gothic genre, a previous theatrical example of which was The Castle Spectre (1797) by Matthew Gregory Lewis . Other Gothic melodramas include The Miller and his Men (1813) by Isaac Pocock , The Woodsman's Hut (1814) by Samuel Arnold and The Broken Sword (1816) by William Dimond . Supplanting

7921-673: Was written by Romaniote and Constantinopolitan Karaite Jews using the Hebrew Alphabet . In a tradition, that in modern time, has come to be known as Greek Aljamiado , some Greek Muslims from Crete wrote their Cretan Greek in the Arabic alphabet . The same happened among Epirote Muslims in Ioannina . This also happened among Arabic-speaking Byzantine rite Christians in the Levant ( Lebanon , Palestine, and Syria ). This usage

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