Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Opera

Did you know ... related to opera ...

[[:File:Muriel Dickson.jpg|100x100px|Muriel Dickson|Muriel Dickson as Josephine in H.M.S. Pinafore]]

• ... that when Scottish soprano Muriel Dickson toured with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company to New York City in 1934–1935, she was invited to join the Metropolitan Opera?

• ... that Pina Bausch and conductor Thomas Hengelbrock staged Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice in Paris and the ancient theater in Epidaurus?

• ... that the debut in Carnegie Hall of tenor James Taylor was in the premiere of the Levine completion of Mozart's Great Mass in C minor?

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Composer and Opera of the Month Proposals

Composer and Opera of the Month Proposals A simple script will automatically replace the text on the front page with the appropriate month when the time comes. Here are the next three months: [edit] Composer of the Month for December 2024 Click Here to set up December's Composer of the Month! [edit] Opera of the Month for December 2024 Click Here to set up December's Opera of the Month! Click here to show the January and February Opera and Composer of the Month preparation areas [edit] Composer of the Month for January 2025 Click Here to set up January's Composer of the Month! [edit] Opera of the Month for January 2025 Click Here to set up January's Opera of the Month! [edit] Composer of the Month for February 2025 Click Here to set up February's Composer of the Month! [edit] Opera of the Month for February 2025 Click Here to set up February's Opera of the Month!

Clean up project: Unsourced biographies of living persons
This is an ongoing project to reference any opera-related biographies of living persons which currently lack any reliable sources. WikiProject Opera/New unreferenced BLPs has a list of all such articles which is updated daily. All Wikipedia editors are encouraged to assist us. Tips on sourcing can be found here.

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Article requests

In a now archived discussion about List of operas performed at the Wexford Festival, GuillaumeTell suggested that the following conductors/directors/designers really ought to appear in Wikipedia. I'm copying it here for editors who may be interested in creating these articles:

• Conductors – Maurizio Benini, György Fischer, Arnold Östman, Evelino Pidò
• Directors – Jean-Claude Auvray, Anthony Besch, Robert Carsen, John Cox, Peter Ebert, John Fulljames, Stefan Janski, Keith Warner
• Designers – Charles Edwards, John Stoddart, Joe Vaněk.

Voceditenore (talk) 12:43, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Cleanup requests

Per this discussion, the following transwikied articles from the Italian Wikipedia need considerable clean-up:

Stefano Gobatti • Luigi Bolis • Lando Bartolini • Gaetano Bardini • Basilio Basili • Lamberto Bergamini • Angelo Bendinelli • Armando Bini • Adolfo Bassi

Singer categories

As there have been no further responses or updates since 24 October I have archived the discussion here. Feel free to raise it again, if anyone thinks it's important or has any updates. Voceditenore (talk) 10:21, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Opera articles: Recordings - which to exclude?

As there has been no further discussion on this since early December 2010, I've archived this here. But this is a topic we may want to revisit at some point, re expanding/clarifying the current article guidelines. Voceditenore (talk) 08:37, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Article request

It would be great if we could have an article on critic and opera scholar Peter G. Davis of The New York Times and New York magazine. He's also contributed many articles to The Times of London and Opera News and is the author of the book The American opera singer: the lives and adventures of America's great singers in opera and concert, from 1825 to the present (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 1999). He is currently referenced in more than 40 wikipedia articles in the english wiki; most of which are in our project's scope.4meter4 (talk) 14:19, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

April CoM and OoM

Composer(s) of the month

The Composer of the Month collaboration focuses on composers in the opera corpus whose works still lack articles

Any suggestions for April? Voceditenore (talk) 14:35, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

If we wish to continue with a birthday theme, I would suggest the following April/May/June birthdays:

• Phyllis Tate: The Lodger (opera) (turns 100 on April 6)
• Hans Vogt (composer): Die Stadt hinter dem Strom (turns 100 on May 14)
• Stanislao Gastaldon: Mala Pasqua (turns 150 on April 8)
• Franz Reizenstein: Anna Kraus (turns 100 on June 7)

What do you all think?4meter4 (talk) 15:07, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

I made a b-i-i-i-g mistake by choosing Detlev Glanert as my first composer article to research. I found far too much material, and spent most of the weekend listening to sound clips, reading reviews and planning trips :-)) The other thing that I discovered (and lost lots of time on), was a (new??) stats feature on Operabase. Here, fudged and kludged, are the top most frequently programmed composers, with external links to google searches on the names. These include many composers not currently in the existing WP article on the opera corpus, but perhaps which should be. (Something broke after 419 composers, but I think that there are enough names here to be going on with):

I'll do Glanert. I'd (personally) like to read more about, and therefore propose, Carl Unander-Scharin [1] who seems to be composing works of contemporary relevance at an astounding pace. Scarabocchio (talk) 17:08, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Note: Scarabocchio's list is now at Wikipedia:WikiProject Opera/Frequently performed opera composers. This is a really useful resource, but it was so humongous, it made this talk page very, very difficult to edit, even collapsing it. Voceditenore (talk) 17:39, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

• Despite its name the CoM is for creating articles on red-linked operas, not composer bios. But we could make a "theme" here, as there are two other composers who are redlinked as well as their operas. So, we ask for both a composer bio and one or two operas for each: Thomas Clayton (1673–1725), Fernando González Casellas (1925–1998), Carl Unander-Scharin (1964 –). Then we could hold 4meter4's birthday boys and girl over til next month. OK? Voceditenore (talk) 07:31, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

• That sounds like a good plan to me.4meter4 (talk) 10:47, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Opera(s) of the month

The Opera of the Month collaboration focuses on improving existing articles

I think the March OoM which had the non-complex but vital task of providing references for completely unsourced articles has worked well. They will probably all be completed by the end of the month, and some very erroneous information has been corrected in the process for at least one of them, Jocelyn. A couple of them also got cleaned up in the process. Shall I pick another selection of unreferenced operas for the April OoM? Voceditenore (talk) 14:35, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

• That sounds like an excellent idea.4meter4 (talk) 20:18, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

The Jocelyn cleanup has a long way to go still (where did opus 109 come from?), and it would be nice if a synopsis were added. Sparafucil (talk) 00:16, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, there is a big problem in that the role titles, voice types, and actual performers in the role table do not appear to be from a single source, and the sources are not consistent at all. Members' input at Talk:Jocelyn (opera) on the best (or least bad) solution would be appreciated. Voceditenore (talk) 10:28, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

• Update Since I will be away April 1-13, I have now filled in the April CoM and OoM based on the above discussions. They will automatically appear on the project's main page on April 1st. I've also provisionally filled in the May CoM based on the discussion. This can be finalized next month as well as choosing the May OoM. Voceditenore (talk) 09:57, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Thomas Beecham

Thomas Beecham has been nominated for FAC here. Comments on the article may be made there. Best regards, -- Ssilvers (talk) 05:50, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

The FAC appears to be closed in favor of doing a peer review first at Wikipedia:Peer review/Thomas Beecham/archive2.4meter4 (talk) 19:19, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

List of lists of ...

Just thought that some of you might be interested to know that Lists of operas is now, er, listed (under O) in the List of lists of lists. "I'm not making this up, you know!" (© Anna Russell.) --GuillaumeTell 18:15, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Munich Biennale

(My first article ... be gentle! :-) Please cast an eye over User:Scarabocchio/Munich_biennale and see if it's ready for release into the wild. It's typical of this imperfect world, but I have a couple of busy weeks coming up, and I'd like to clear my in-tray a little... Scarabocchio (talk) 12:39, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback (various places). Nobody screamed, so I have moved the page into article space... Scarabocchio (talk) 17:23, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Citation needed?

This request to provide a citation for the date and place of the premiere of Don Giovanni leaves me speechless. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 07:16, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Good Grief! I've added one that he/she can even read online, none of those sources made from dead trees which require library visits. ;-)

More grief: isn't it true, that the lead should be just a summary of the article and therefore not need any (!) citations? Citations in the article, I understand, or not. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:07, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Since the Estates Theatre seems to be mentioned by name in the lead only, and that specific theatre is not given in many sources, rather either just Prague or the National (e.g., New Grove Opera), perhaps this is not such an unreasonable request. A source in addition to Amadeus should probably also be cited, since Amadeus identifies the theatre as "Gräflich Nostitzsches National-Ständetheater, Teatro Nazionale Nostitz", and this might be confusing. --Robert.Allen (talk) 21:27, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Opera title italics

Here is a question recently posed on my talk page, which I've taken the liberty of copying (and answering) here, because the discussion is relevant to the wider project. Simon the Likable (talk) 15:44, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

May I ask why are you changing opera article titles to italics? Has there been some WP-wide decision to do this? Has the Opera project been told about it? --Kleinzach 22:46, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

I was wandering around articles on Holst where I found that, unlike all the book articles I'd been looking at recently, Savitri (opera) had not had its title italicised. I checked the MOS (WP:ITALICTITLE), found that the title should be in italics, and so added {{Italic title}} as required. Before long I'd worked my way through the operas of Holst, Vaughan Williams, and Puccini (plus a couple of individual ones). It was when I reached Monteverdi and found featured articles with the same "problem" that I began to get nervous. At this point I dug a bit further, finding contrary opinions within this 2010 RFC and certainly in the WikiProject Opera guidelines. I began to realise that what I was doing was not as uncontroversial as I first thought. So I stopped.

That's the "why". Answering your second question: yes (see WP:ITALICTITLE, although the policy change appears to be controversial). And thirdly, no, I didn't discuss this at the Opera project until now. I now realise it would have been polite to have done so earlier.

Personally, I'm pro-italics because... well for many of the reasons well rehearsed at the RFC. Fundamentally, I'm interested in packing as much communication into the text we write as possible: if we write "Tosca" readers know we're talking about the character (a thing); when "Tosca", then we're discussing the opera (a work about a thing, or if you prefer, a meta-thing). This thinking applies to article titles as much as to any other text. Also, I like consistency, so the old rule that says "use italics for the names of works of art (but not in article titles)" makes me uncomfortable. I prefer the simple: follow WP:ITALIC for all text.

What should happen now? This needs to be addressed at two levels:

• In relation to my specific edits, if the project requests it (consensus) I will happily revert my changes (an anonymous ip editor has already done this in six cases). It might be desirable to do this while the broader issue is discussed and a consensus reached on the next point... Let me know what you think.
• The Opera project guidelines are now inconsistent with the MOS, so it seems that the project needs either to get on-board, or to mount a challenge to revert the MOS to status quo ante. (I'd prefer to go with the WP-wide standard, in which case I draw your attention to a clever solution adopted by the book project: someone's modified the {{Infobox book}} template to automatically italicise the title of any article it is used in. Perhaps a suitably skilled person could do something similar for the navboxes used on many (most?) opera pages. This now seems preferable to my ad hoc approach.)

Simon the Likable (talk) 15:44, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Hi Simon. This was the Opera project members' take on the close of the RfC. Basically, the MoS was changed on a rather dubious interpetation of consensus (not just the OP's view) and discussions were still continuing at that point, so we decided to let the dust settle before changing our recommendation. At least one member of the project was leaning in favour of italic titles. My view was one of weary resignation, even though I think italic titles are harder to read, and well, unencyclopedic. I've got to the point where I don't care one way or another, but for the sake of uniformity, maybe we should go along with it. {{Italic title}} is now transcluded in almost 370,000 articles. [2], making the opera articles out of sync with the vast majority (or so it seems) of articles on plays, novels, etc. Not sure how the others feel. Voceditenore (talk) 18:54, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Waste of everybody's time is what I think. --GuillaumeTell 19:00, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

That too. ;-) As I said in the past discussion, I have no intention of changing the titles of 2000 opera articles to italics simply because a small group of editors from science projects pushed it through—complete waste of content editors' time, as far as I'm concerned. But I'm not really up for reverting them either, also a complete waste of time. Sigh... Voceditenore (talk) 19:10, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm still against them for the reasons I previously expressed. I don't think they are encyclopaedic and I don't like them on aesthetic grounds: it makes it look like the title has seen a ghost. I don't see why the biologists couldn't have changed their own page titles without dragging everybody else's into it; it was essentially a different issue. I really don't like the way the MoS debate was concluded; it should have been closed as "no consensus", which would have defaulted to the status quo. On the other hand, I'm not sure I have the will to fight this one. Italic titles, though bad in many ways, at least don't spread "disinformation", unlike some other would-be obligatory Wiki-features I could name but won't. I simply reverted a couple of titles to see what would happen and to see what the current opinion was. --Folantin (talk) 19:42, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

I wish that Wikipedia's "italics" actually looked like italics, not slanted text. .... but that's probably tangential. More pertinently, if someone wants to go about go about changing all the titles to italics in compliance, they shouldn't expect any help from people who got rather cheated by the mis-closure of the debate almost-instinct 21:25, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree that the discussion was closed poorly. I would be very, very happy if someone were to start a new RFC, as long as the only choices were "Italics" and "No italics". Weird exceptions are disruptive and should not be allowed. Ozob (talk) 03:26, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

This is a typical WP case where a discussion of multiple ambiguous alternatives with no clear consensus, ended up with one of the alternatives becoming an unambiguous "must" in the Manual of Style anyway. Now that vast numbers of articles have been switched over by editors who were simply following the "revised" MoS in good faith, it will become virtually impossible to shift via an RfC. I highly doubt that any members here would initiate such a time-sink. I also agree with Folantin, that while they are unencyclopedic and undesirable, at least they do not mislead the reader. So faced with the current reality, we could take the stance in the OP article guidelines that we do not recommend italic titles and cite the unclear outcome of the RfC, will not be italicising titles ourselves, but will not revert an italic title once it has been added (another time sink). Or some such formulation.Voceditenore (talk) 08:19, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it's too late to shut the stable door now, the horse has bolted. I don't particularly like the way this has gone but I won't be reverting any more italic titles. All I would ask is that anyone who does change titles to italics mark those edits as minor (as Simon the Likable has done - thanks) since I have a long watchlist of opera articles to maintain. I often have a beef with the way the MoS and some of its "regulars" go about things, but at least this isn't a case like "reducing clutter from the lead sentence" (clutter being valuable facts like precise birth dates or Cyrillic names). Italic titles are relatively harmless. --Folantin (talk) 10:00, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

I just want to point out that The New Grove Dictionary of Opera uses italics for specific opera articles, both in the title and in the page headers. Since we follow Grove's capitalization rules, it seems to me perhaps we should also follow their practice regarding italics. --Robert.Allen (talk) 20:39, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Touché! I checked my Grove Opera, and of course you're right. --GuillaumeTell 23:48, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, well done, Robert.Allen. I feel a lot better about it now, even if the Wikipedia type face does result in a rather goofy form of "italics". Folantin's right about the letters looking like they've seen a ghost.;-). Should we simply remove the current section Title display (use of italics) from the guidelines? Or do people think we need to re-write it instead? I personally prefer the former. Voceditenore (talk) 10:48, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree. We should just remove the current section as there is no need for any special mention of italic titles in our guidelines. The project as a whole clearly has no unified attitude towards this feature, for or against. If individuals want to change titles to italics then it's up to them to do so, but there won't be any concerted project campaign to alter them to fit the new MOS guidelines. --Folantin (talk) 09:45, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

La reine de Saba

Template:Multi-listen item

Found a soundfile for this. A little over-processed, but pretty good. Article's not very good at all, though. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 00:06, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Interesting piece. I've reduced the size of the file icon (only here) so as not to clog up this talk page. I also moved it in the article down to the "Highlights" section. It had been placed it at the very top of the article above the navbox [3] where it doesn't belong. Voceditenore (talk) 06:26, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

It's awkward knowing where to put these in articles with navboxes. Where there ISN'T a navbox or image, it goes right at the top. Where there's an image, you can usually adjust the width ff the image to make a pleasing little box with the image and soundfile. But navboxes are such awkward, unresizable little things. I'm not entirely sure I like them. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 01:09, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

On opera articles, our policy is to keep the operas by composer navboxes at the top right for consistancy. Other images and files must be placed elsewhere in the article.4meter4 (talk) 01:12, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

What guideline says that sound files go at the top of the article when there is no picture? Certainly not opera project guidelines. In my view the sound file should never go at the top of the article, whether there's an image or not, especially if it's a reasonably well developed article. The sound file icons/boxes are ugly, visually obtrusive, and often seriously interfere with the layout of the article. They are also out of synch with the text in the lede. They belong further down, preferably at the point in the synopsis where the extract would be heard in the opera, or in a list of numbers, etc. Voceditenore (talk) 05:39, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

That's where it's generally put in every article on a song, etc - unless there's good reason to go elsewhere. It's so that people can listen to the music while reading, instead of only finding out there's a half an hour of music at the end. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 14:38, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm talking about articles on operas, not articles on individual songs and arias. And even there it is sometimes appropriate to have a file lower down in the article. An example is Ombra mai fu, where the file is basically a curiosity, transposed for a tenor and not sung in baroque style. It isn't remotely how the aria was meant to sound nor how it sounds when sung in a performance of the opera from which it comes. I don't view sound files as something for the reader's entertainment while they are reading the article. Like images, they should be clearly illustrative of particular parts of the article and are much more meaningful (and encyclopedic) when they are contextualized. And like the image guidelines in the MoS, just because they exist, is no reason to add all of them to an article. Voceditenore (talk) 20:26, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

I suppose you're right for operatic selections. I do, however, think that for more self-contained pieces, like, say, Burleske, though, where we have a full performance of the work, that giving a full recording right at the start lets the reader understand the article as a whole far better. However, more generally, I think it's usually best to have recordings as early as possible: In particular, the occasionally-seen practice of sticking them at the end is a horribly bad idea, as the reader will not know they're available until they've already read the whole article. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 21:52, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

I think both of you raise valid points. In my opinion the placement of audio files, just like images, should be based on an article by article basis. There are no hard or fast rules as where things must go. Just put things where they work the best in each article as long they don't interfere with any project wide formating that has been implemented (ie the operas by composers templates).4meter4 (talk) 22:27, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Credo accounts

Credo Reference is offerring 400 free accounts to active Wikipedians, subject to certain criteria. There's also an overspill list for anyone not meeting the criteria. So far there are more accounts available than takers, so the secondary list may be successful too. See Wikipedia:Credo for how to sign up. Voceditenore (talk) 08:20, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

RIP Lee Hoiby

Composer Lee Hoiby died today. His article is in poor shape and a nice tribute to him by the project would be to improve his article's referencing and content.4meter4 (talk) 00:05, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

I've started improving the referencing and content. Any help would be appriciated.4meter4 (talk) 18:58, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

New cat:good or bad?

Category:Metropolitan Opera performers was just created by User:Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ). I personally think this is overcategorization and should be deleted. We already have a useful list at the List of performers at the Metropolitan Opera.4meter4 (talk) 00:37, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree. Even if it were a useful categorization (as opposed to the list, which seems fine), it will inevitably be applied to any person who has ever performed at the Met, which will be a disaster. Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 01:02, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Me too. See Wikipedia:Overcategorization#Performers by performance venue. – Voceditenore (talk) 09:58, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Template:Opera lists ???

Template:Opera_lists

How come Argentine operas get a look in, but French opera, German opera, Russian opera and Italian opera are apparently missing from all the navigation templates?

Which kind of indirectly leads to my next proposal: Perhaps we should do a drive to improve some of the general articles. Featured Sounds and Featured Pictures have produced a lot of useful illustrative content which could be added, and a good burst of concentrated work may well get some of them to FA, and hence on the main page. If you wanted, I could try to bring Featured sounds in. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 01:19, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

To answer your first question, Template:Opera_lists is a template for List-class articles in the opera project's scope. List of Argentine operas is a list, whereas French opera, German opera, Russian opera and Italian opera are not lists.4meter4 (talk) 01:28, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but they don't appear in any of the other templates either. And why have three templates when you inevitably paste in all three, anyway? Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 01:38, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

As far as I can tell only French opera has the 3 opera templates in it. The others have none. The templates were added by User:Klingoncowboy4, who created the article, in 2006. That user is not a regular contributor to opera related articles and probably wasn't aware of the suitability of the templates. I would suggest removing the templates from French opera altogether. The majority of the articles do not need more than one of those templates, so I see no real need to make any changes.4meter4 (talk) 01:53, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

As 4meter4 pointed out French Opera is an anomaly. Generally speaking, speaking the nav remplates should only go on related articles, e.g. genres in genre articles, terms in terminology articles, lists in list articles, etc. So why combine them into one big template? Also, there's no need for every article to appear in some kind of template. "See also" sections for small lists of related articles are equally effective, especially for the articles on national opera traditions. Alternatively, make a template for national opera traditions, with links to exisiting articles only, not something like this. Voceditenore (talk) 06:12, 29 March 2011 (UTC)