DUODRAMA. A kind of melodrama, of which Mozart speaks with enthusiasm and at some length in letters to his father from Mannheim and Kaisersheim in the end of 1778. The name would indicate a piece for two performers; and those which he heard—Benda's ‘Medea
’ and ‘Ariadne auf Naxos
’—and that which he contemplated writing himself—‘Semiramis
’—appear to have been pieces in which spoken dialogue was accompanied by the orchestra, as in Mendelssohn's ‘Midsummer Night's...
