Music for the Melodramatic Theatre in Nineteenth-Century London & New York by Michael V. Pisani (review)

Michael Pisani's newest book is a brilliant piece of scholarship that meticulously documents an extremely important but little-studied component of the nineteenth-century popular stage: the music that was a vital part of theatrical performances. Based on primary sources—newspapers, letters, periodicals, memoirs, reminiscences, novels, and (most important) archival documents like scores, marginalia in promptbooks, music plots, and manuscript collections of cues—the book is both an important scholarly accomplishment and an engagingly written story. The author used these primary documents (which must have taken years to excavate) and buttressed them with secondary scholarship to examine the emergence of what became known as melodrama and to explain how different directors, producers, composers, and performers crafted the changing styles that thrilled and entertained audiences in London and New York for most of the nineteenth century. His careful examination of the various permutations of this style as it evolved and changed will be of great value to anyone interested in nineteenth-century popular culture, especially theater historians. Pisani's most important contribution, however, is in the realm of music history, for his major focus is the generally forgotten musical component of this extremely important style of popular theater.

The book is arranged chronologically. After an introduction, in which he defines the genres, concepts, and terms to be used throughout the text, the material is organized into three large segments: part 1, "Forging a New Musico-Dramatic Genre"; part 2, "Populating the Popular Drama"; and part 3, "Transforming the Popular Drama." In a brief conclusion, Pisani summarizes his findings and illustrates how musical conventions of nineteenth-century melodrama found a new voice in various popular media of the twentieth century, specifically, early radio broadcasts, the cinema, and television.

In the first third of the book, Pisani carefully examines the emergence and full blossoming of melodrama, which he discusses within the context of eighteenth-century beliefs about the power of music to move the affections and in relation to some important eighteenth-century French and English theatrical styles (pantomime, French mélodrame, ballet, opéra comique, English comic opera, and even opera seria). This examination of the rise of melodrama is securely grounded in the political and social developments of the late eighteenth century: he describes the fine line that producers and directors had to navigate as they attempted to please audiences (who were attracted by the gestures, costumes, scenery, acrobatics, visual effects, and musical cues, or mélos, of the newly emerging style) and placate censors (who were concerned with the potentially incendiary implications of the stories). He also defines the basic dramatic criteria of the style: a true (or at least plausible) story, a moral message, a protagonist who was a folk hero (frequently an outlaw), a rival who was an unambiguous villain, tantalizing special effects, and a happy ending. And, of course, music. Pisani argues that this latter element, which is crucial to understanding this style of popular theater, is frequently overlooked, for many of the printed dramatic sources do not include information about the music (or other crucial nonverbal performance elements): "To interpret a melodrama from a copy of the play alone is like trying to visualize a building from an architect's blueprint. [Published] acting-editions of nineteenth-century plays are like a floor plan, wherein dialogue and staging are literally represented, but gestures, movement, and spectacle can at most be described, and other aspects, such as the actors' vocal inflections and mélos that equally served to buttress the drama, are very often not even mentioned at all" (41). A lack of understanding of all these nonverbal performance elements, Pisani persuasively argues, results in a woefully incomplete understanding of the form itself—its appeal, its power, and its historical importance.

The new style, which coalesced in England around 1800, portrayed national heroes, incorporated...