Melodramma

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{{For|the Andrea Bocelli song|Melodramma (song)}}

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Melodramma (plural: melodrammi) is a 17th-century Italian term for a text to be set as an opera, or the opera itself.The Harvard Dictionary of Music, fourth edition, 2003, p. 499. In the 19th century, it was used in a much narrower sense by English writers to discuss developments in the early Italian libretto, e.g., Rigoletto and Un ballo in maschera.Patrick Smith in The Tenth Muse, p.73; The Harvard Dictionary of Music, fourth edition, 2003, p. 499. Characteristic are the influence of French bourgeois drama, female instead of male protagonists, and the practice of opening the action with a chorus.Patrick Smith in The Tenth Muse, p.73.

It should not be confused with Melodrama (spelt with a single rather than a double m) in the sense either of Victorian stage melodrama (drama of exaggerated intensity) or of spoken declamation accompanied by background music (in Italian, melologo).Budden, Julian: Melodramma in 'The New Grove Dictionary of Opera', ed. Stanley Sadie (London, 1992) {{ISBN|0-333-73432-7}}