MELODEON. The early American organ. in \\I'M' an exhaust or suction bellows draws the air inward through the reed:. About 1836 .1. Carbart made a number of improvements in the melodeon, and upon the application of still fur ther inventions by E. P. Needham and E. Hamlin the instrument beeame widely popular. The supply of wind for the reeds is obtained by means of a pair of treadles, worked by the performer. and the reeds themselves are enntrolled by stops and slider mechanism. The tone of the instru ment has been steadily imprlived, and now suc cessfully imitates a number of orchestral in struments. SO' I I A RMON I ORGAN. MELODRAMA (from nk. pi?or, inelos, song Aprign, drama. action. play). Properly a half musical drama, or a dramatic performanee in which the dialogue is interspersed with music. Rousseau's Pygmalion is commonly cited as the first French melodrama, and some of the earlier English operas are of this type. In Italy, how ever, the name was first applied to the opera, by its inventor, Ottavio lthmecini, near the end of the sixteenth century. In Germany the term
has been particularly used to designate a decla mation with instrumental accompaniment (as distinguished from the recitative, which is char acteristic of the regular opera, q.v.). The ob ject of the music is to intensify the emotions evoked by the spoken words, which limy be a poem like Schiller's Lied eon der tilorke„ or a regular drama; but the ;esthetic value of the practice has hem nimbi disputed, and it bas almost fallen into disuse in serious works. Our present use of the word melodrama appears to have originated in France, where. in the latter part of the eighteenth century, it came to 1.e applied to the style of popular tragedy in which were presented the conventional types of stage villains, perseeuted innocent heroines and their kind, along with elements of comedy as well as of music and dancing, and with a regularly happy eliding in deference to well-known popular preferences in this respect.