“A volume that offers such fresh perspectives on melodrama’s tangled forms, genealogies, and influences would be enough in itself. But this collection goes much further: reconnecting the literary study of melodrama with the musical, while also indicating how the ‘melodramatic moment’ is inescapably intertwined with wider developments in spoken and sung theater in the decades around 1800. The result is nothing less than a model for a new kind of interdisciplinary cultural history, of a kind to appeal to anyone interested in the music and drama of the time.”

Benjamin Walton, University of Cambridge

“This collection of essays makes a much needed contribution to our understanding of melodrama and should be on everyone’s go-to list for research, practice, and teaching. The editors offer us a tight distillation of the existing literature on melodrama in both theatre and music fields, bringing together the philosophical and radical roots of the form in ways that both disciplines will find energizing and informative.”

Gilli Bush-Bailey, University of London

"Under the assured direction of its editors,Katherine Hambridge and Jonathan Hicks,The Melodramatic Moment stages a critical reorientation towards historically situated performance, putting sound centre stage. [...] The litheness of the volume’s narrative arc reflects the scholars’ commitment to trans-national historiography and historically situated performance. By tightening the reins on the historical scope of their investigation,questions of transmission, circulation and cultural transfer come to the fore, reveling in a productive capaciousness, that at once undoes many of the entrenched binaries associated with the genre, while affirming melodrama’s‘fundamentally undisciplined’ nature."

Music and Letters