Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Opera/Archive 64

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Composer lists for operetta and zarzuela

Further up the page, we discussed listfying the categories Category:Operetta composers and Category:Zarzuela composers with a view to ultimately deleting them once the lists are done. I would happy to do the lists, but I have a couple of questions before I put any work into it...

  1. Is there agreement that it's worthwhile to produce these lists?
  2. If so, what's the preferred format - in simple chronological order by date of birth, in alphabetical order, or grouped by nationality? The latter can be quite tricky. Most of the operetta composers seem to have the nationality in the lead para. But what about people like Rudolf Friml (born in Prague at the time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and lived most of life in the US)? Then there's the Catalan vs. Spanish issue with Zarzuela composers.

Answers on the back of a postcard please. Voceditenore (talk) 16:50, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

1. Yes.
2. Alphabetical order (or alternatively chronological) but definitely not nationality. --Kleinzach 23:02, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
I was hoping you'd say definitely not nationality.;-) I'm going to go ahead and do the lists alphabetically but I'll include the B and D dates and city of birth. People can extrapolate, or not, as the case may be. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 07:33, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
Update I've now done List of zarzuela composers. Monkey with it as you all wish. I should have the List of operetta composers ready in a couple of days. Voceditenore (talk) 09:05, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
Good. I've moved the articles from the Zarzuela composers cat to the Opera composers cat (almost all of them were there already). Thanks. --Kleinzach 10:08, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
Further update Since then I've found a couple more who had slipped through the net entirely and added them (also checked their articles to ensure they were in the Opera composers cat. I also added several red-linked composers who are quite prominent and should eventually have articles. Almost all of them have articles in the Spanish Wikipedia and I've annotated the list to provide links to them. One or two are not on the Spanish Wikpedia yet. They're annotated with a link to a reliable biographical soource. I figured this would help anyone who wants to create one of those articles. Voceditenore (talk) 13:15, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
Great job. Maybe this will shine a light into darkest Zarzuelaland for us. Any Spanish speakers here? --Kleinzach 06:43, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
I can't speak it to save my soul. Every time I try, Italian comes out instead. But I can read and translate it ok. I'm planning to start a couple of articles on key zarzuelas like Doňa Francisquita and La Gran Vía. Doesn't look good to have so many red links in the Zarzuela article. So watch this space. Lets hope the reference police don't have a fit because I've (the dreaded) "non-English" sources. :-) Voceditenore (talk) 09:51, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
Latest update I've now finished the List of operetta composers. It has all the members of Category:Operetta composers plus some more (including Offenbach) who fell through the net, and were gleaned via the Operetta article. Once again, monkey with it as you all wish. Incidentally, many of the actual biographical articles are missing the full dates of birth and death (i.e. they have only the year, but lack month and day) and the places of birth and death. I've ensured that they are all on the list, however. Mostly via cross-research in the French and German Wikipedias. So, it can be useful resource for anyone wanting to improve the indivudual articles. Voceditenore (talk) 09:51, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

List of Mozart's operas

I have created a new list of Mozart's operatic works. I am aware of existing lists, but these tend not to go much beyond the titles. My list gives as much basic information as possible for each opera (date, K number, English title, list of characters and voice types, type of opera and full first performance details, etc.) in a simple tabular form. I have also linked each individual opera back to the list, via "See also". I believe that this could be a compact, useful resource, though obviously any improvements that can be introduced will be most welcome. Advance notice: I am currently working on a list of Mozart's operatic characters. Brianboulton (talk) 16:47, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

This is a substantial and scholarly piece of work, however I do have concerns. It's important that new articles should be integrated and fully linked to existing articles and not developed as a series of texts in parallel to existing ones. In general we should be developing existing articles not abandoning them and starting new ones because that's confusing for readers who can't see how the content is structured. For example an index of Mozart's characters linked back to the role tables of articles on individual articles would be helpful, but not an article which duplicates information. --Kleinzach 00:21, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
I also see that you are not following the capitalization and spelling of operas as used in the articles. For example, Thamos, König in Aegypten not Thamos, König in Ägypten, Idomeneo, Rè di Creta not Idomeneo/Idomeneo, re di Creta, L'Oca del Cairo not L'oca del Cairo. What is the reasoning behind this, I wonder? Are the individual opera article titles wrong? --Kleinzach 01:06, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
I used the "Osborne" title-forms (The Complete Operas of Mozart). However, I agree that for consistency's sake the capitalization and spellings should be the same in the list as in the individual opera articles. I have amended the list, except that I have retained the form "rè" rather than "re", which appears in the opera articles. Brianboulton (talk) 10:16, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
I think Kleinzach is right to be concerned about duplication, and in fact at the talk page for the article, I expressed enthusiasm only for the idea of an article that could state points about Mozart's operas as a whole--everything that could be said about individual operas should be said in the specific articles for those operas. Opus33 (talk) 03:18, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
My sole purpose in compiling this list was to create a convenient reference source, in one location, providing an overview of the 22 operatic works. I have expressed concern about the change of title to "Mozart's operas", precisely because this title might suggest something more. I have been careful, in the textual part of the article, not to discuss issues which are individual to the operas. Obviously, the list duplicates information found elsewhere, but that is true of many Wikipedia lists, and is surely not the point; the list is intended to give general basic information on a single page that might otherwise involve visiting many pages. I was actually quite surprised when I found that no such page existed, which is why I created it myself. Brianboulton (talk) 10:16, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Brian. I find it a valuable resource to have all this on one page prefaced with his very well written introduction. It's natural for information to be duplicated in various places and is not necessarily a bad thing. What's important is whether it's a useful source for the general reader and I think it is. It certainly doesn't duplicate the simple list of Mozart's compositions. I think there are plenty of readers out there who would appreciate not having to repeatedly click on every opera in that list to try and get an overview of Mozart, the opera composer. Mozart's operas provides a useful "bridge", if you like, between List of compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and the articles on each individual opera. Besides, no one seems to object to the "duplication" between List of compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Köchel catalogue. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 12:56, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia is not a magazine. Readers don't expect to look for multiple articles on the same thing. The magazine approach (No-one's written a good article on X recently. I'll have a go.) is different from the encyclopedic (The article on X isn't very good - I'll rewrite it.)
Excepting the inclusion of cast lists, I think the content of Mozart's operas is good (as I made clear from the beginning). The list is similar to ones I've done recently for Grétry, Piccinni, Cherubini etc. However the latter are integral to the main articles - they are exactly where the reader expects to find them.
In this case the reader wanting an opera list will go to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, then to List of compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - where he/she will find a minimal list of titles, dates and numbers only - and then perhaps eventually to Mozart's operas (though there is no indication that there is a list, rather than a text there). So my question boils down to this: what is the reasoning behind leaving the short simple section in the List of compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as it is, and starting a completely new article? Would it not have been better to improve the list of compositions (if necessary) starting with the operas? --Kleinzach 23:53, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
This has nothing to do with making Wikipedia into a magazine. If "readers don't expect to look for multiple articles on the same thing", why does List of compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart duplicate the information already contained in Köchel catalogue? For a very good reason - some readers would find it useful to have the material organized by genre rather than chronologically (and vice versa). That's not a feature available in paper encyclopedias, but one of the advantages of Wikipedia's larger, more flexible resources. Similarly, unlike the Encyclopedia Britannica, which covers everything about Mozart in a single article (albeit some of the areas quite sketchily), Wikipedia has separate articles for Mozart and Freemasonry, Mozart and Beethoven, Mozart and Roman Catholicism, Death of Mozart, etc. etc.
The problem with adding the content of Mozart's operas to List of compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, even pruning the cast lists to what you have in Grétry (which I would be in favour of), is that it would make that page awfully long, especially if something similar were done for each of the other major categories there, e.g. symphonies, sacred music, concerti, string quartets etc. It's already 59 kilobytes, longer than Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart itself. If something similar won't or shouldn't be done for the other categories, then the page will look very imbalanced in addition to be being too long, just as Mozart would be if Death of Mozart was included there. In fact, I would argue that some of the other categories on that page could usefully have their own separate articles too, especially the biggy's like Mozart's symphonies. This objection: "there is no indication that there is a list, rather than a text there" isn't really a problem. The wording on List of compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart can easily be changed to reflect that. Voceditenore (talk) 07:38, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
Hmm, the reference to the Köchel catalogue is a straw man. The same content being presented in a different way can of course be useful. We already do that in opera lists (e.g. List of important operas, The opera corpus, List of opera librettists etc.), and it is sometimes found in print encyclopedias - though perhaps to a lesser extent because of economics. Re: long articles, these are perfectly OK if we present, section and divide them up properly. There are lots of precedents (e.g. the work lists of Franz Liszt which are divided in two). --Kleinzach 08:48, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
Here are a couple of suggestions, towards resolving the main issues discussed above. First, revert to a title that is more suggestive of a list. I was never happy with the change to "Mozart's operas", which doesn't suggest a list at all. Why should it not be "List of Mozart's operas"? Second, make the article a daughter article to List of compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, by replacing the present (somewhat uninspiring) opera list in that article with a simple link to this one. This would integrate this article into the mainstream listing, would enable it to retain its present format, would not impact on the length of the List of compositions, and would provide a pattern for future daughter-lists, e.g. for symphonies. The question of whether to strip out the cast lists can be addressed separately, if we can agree on the titling and structural issues first. Brianboulton (talk) 10:52, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
Yes, I agree with both those suggestions. --Kleinzach 11:01, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
That seems fine to me too. Voceditenore (talk) 14:55, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
I'll do it, then. 16:44, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
I've already pared the opera list at List of compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart down quite a bit and created a "main article" pointer to the new page. In my opinion, the list doesn't need to be removed from there as in its pared down form its relatively brief. Several other lists there are much longer and are screaming for child articles. That's a discussion for that page, though. DavidRF (talk) 16:53, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
I don't see any reason to keep the short list of operas. It's redundant and just occupies space in an already long list. Frankly I'm surprised that you kept it after three of us had agreed to remove it. --Kleinzach 03:27, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
That seems fair enough to me. I will still go ahead and change this article's name to "List of Mozart's operas", for the reasons discussed above. Also, the "re" versus "rè" debate, below, is relevant to the summary in the list of compositions. On the remaining issue of the inclusion of cast details, this [1] is what the list looks like with the cast details removed and replaced by a summary of voice types. I've done this a bit hurriedly, and there is some checking to be done. Subject to that, is this a better version of the list? I will await an opinion. Brianboulton (talk) 17:13, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
The [2] looks excellent. A model of its kind. --Kleinzach 03:30, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
OK, I've now replaced the list with the "voice types" version. I agree that it is better. I am still checking out some details, so it's not yet quite in its final form. Brianboulton (talk) 12:05, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
One minor point: should 'Year' be clarified? Should it be 'Year of completion' i.e. the date when Mozart finished composing? --Kleinzach 22:49, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
Not all the works were completed, so I've put "Year composed", which should clarify things enough. I suppose minor matters concerning the list should now be raised on the list's talk page. Brianboulton (talk) 23:49, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

"rè" and "re"

What exactly is the rationale for using "rè" rather that "re" in Il re pastore, etc.? "re", not "rè", is the Italian word for "king". --GuillaumeTell 17:16, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Osborne uses "rè", so does Cairns. Maybe it's an old man thing - perhaps we should ask them. Brianboulton (talk) 18:10, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
You'd take their word for it over that of an Italian dictionary?? --GuillaumeTell 00:44, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
Actually, it probably has nothing to do with either Osborne or Cairns, but with their publishers' copy-editors. Especially with works that size. Trust me, I've been there.;-) I checked my various Italian dictionaries, including one from 1913 to see if "rè" might be an archaic spelling of "re" (king), but it's not. In Italian, the accented "rè" refers only to the note, as in "do re mi". It needs to be changed in the Mozart's operas article. Voceditenore (talk) 07:38, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
This has now been done. Brianboulton (talk) 10:52, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
Well, I wouldn't trust Osborne to get things right (he thinks that Joseph Kerman called Tosca a "shoddy little shocker") but I'm surprised at Cairns, who is a genuine scholar. --GuillaumeTell 18:02, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
It's a mystery. I've deleted the accent to go with the consensus, but I'm not wholly convinced that Osborne and Cairns, and/or their copyeditors, simply got things wrong. I have two recordings of Idomeneo; one shows the accent, the other doesn't. My recordings of Il re pastore and Mitridate both show the accent. So although the dictionary evidence seems conclusive, it's odd that so many people kept making the same mistake. Brianboulton (talk) 12:12, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
Just for information, one could always have a look at http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Il_re_pastore_(Mozart), the Italian wikipedia. There is no mention of re with an accent. Nor in my copy of the complete works of Metastasio, which I (cough, cough) just happen to have on my bookshelf. The Petrobelli edition of 1985, available at the Mozarteum site, makes no mention at all of the accent. Just to clear things up... Safebreaker (talk) 10:24, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Inclusion on Article formats page?

After all the excellent work by Brianboulton and the detailed discussions, perhaps we should make the list a model for the other complete opera lists, by referencing it on the Opera Project article styles and formats page? --Kleinzach 02:59, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

I've now added this. --Kleinzach 03:27, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Stub removal review/Category:Opera stubs

The following articles need a second opinion as to whether the stub tag can be removed. Once you've reviewed an article please strike it out. If you so think it's sufficiently expanded, remove the stub tag. If you find others that need a second opinion please add them. Voceditenore (talk) 14:30, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

I have added synopsis in L'arlesiana and removed the stub tag. - Jay (talk) 18:23, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Music drama

Any opinions on the validity of this rather obscure and not-very-good article? I understand what it's trying to discuss - the sort-of-distinct-genre that Gluck began and Wagner developed - but I'm not sure "Music drama" is the right name for this. For starters, all opera is arguably "music drama" (as are musicals): the term is not used exclusively to refer to Gluck/Wagner tradition. Any suggestions for a better title? Or perhaps this topic could be more profitably discussed in an existing article? Moreschi (talk) (debate) 15:44, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree that it's not very good, but quite a few articles do link to it. I see that the creator of the article has been absent from WP for a year. (S)he was clearly principally concerned with Wagner, so maybe this should be raised at WP:Wagner? There's an article in Opera Grove (by Barry Millington), however, which says that Wagner himself rejected the term! I might add that Category:Music dramas also muddies the waters. --GuillaumeTell 17:04, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
Likewise, not very good. The history of the article is quite interesting. The original article largely written in 2006 was entirely focused on Wagner, then a year ago, someone decided to stick Gluck in there which makes the lead paragraph quite bizarre. The added section on Gluck further down makes it look like he was a major influence on Wagner? Is that true? Voceditenore (talk) 17:48, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
It looks like it was started as part of an argument on the Richard Wagner page. You get a lot of Wagnerites arguing that their hero's later works are not to be sullied with the name of "opera". But, as GT says, I've seen experts state that Wagner himself was not very keen on the term "music drama". "The added section on Gluck further down makes it look like he was a major influence on Wagner?" I've got an essay somewhere in which André Tubeuf has a real rant about Wagner more or less trying to airbrush Gluck out of history and deny his influence. Both Gluck and Wagner tried to make opera focus more on the drama - taking it back to the ideals of the early Florentines and Monteverdi. But I'm really not sure Gluck should have a large place in that article (I've also heard it said Wagner preferred Cherubini). In fact, I don't know what to do with this less than ideal page. --Folantin (talk) 18:05, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
Cut it, reduce it. That's my suggestion. Millington's two paragraph treatment in Grove - which is not centred on Wagner - seems to me the way to go. Millington explains the history of the term from 'dramma per musica' on, he doesn't say 'Music drama is . . .' --Kleinzach 01:00, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
Millington is wrong to bring in "dramma per musica", which originally just meant "a play intended to be set to music", i.e. a libretto, and later "an opera seria" (not exactly a music-drama!). The Oxford Dictionary of Opera, and Grove's Dramma per musica article have the correct information. --GuillaumeTell 00:33, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
"Works in which the musical and dramatic elements are . . . entirely unified. . . . The term first came into general use with Wagner: he realized in his later works the ideal to which German opera had been moving for over a century." (Oxford Dictionary of Opera). In other words Music drama = Gesamtkunstwerk, and (in this case) Oxford = POV. --Kleinzach 00:10, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Update

I've put merge tags on Music drama and Gesamtkunstwerk, with the latter being the intended target. Discussion is welcome. Moreschi (talk) (debate) 11:16, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes I support this. It's a good idea to consolidate the Wagner content. --Kleinzach 23:35, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Cleanup list

As promised, we now have a new Cleanup list linked to the Can you help? box on the project page. It's done by WolterBot and should be updated about once a month or so. Unlike the former 'To do list' it prioritizes according to the number of tags. It should be very useful. Top priority this month - Franco Corelli! --Kleinzach 01:04, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Here, as an example, is the listing for Corelli. --Kleinzach 13:21, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
ArticleMaintenance categories
Franco Corelli Articles needing expert attention, Articles with unsourced statements (Jul 2007), Articles with unsourced statements (Aug 2007), Miscellaneous articles needing expert attention, Pages needing expert attention, Wikipedia articles needing style editing (Dec 2007)
Unlike the old 'To do' list, the bot creates a list that can be edited, so when the article is fixed it can be removed. This avoids anybody else wasting time checking it. --Kleinzach 02:56, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
This automation might take getting used to; it can also be a waste of time to discover the tagged section of Debussy has nothing to do with opera. It is a pity that Debussy is alphabetized under "Claude", btw. Sparafucil (talk) 04:08, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
Hmm. I'd recommend starting with the most urgent and problematic articles at the top of the list (most tagged items) rather than down towards the bottom. For technical reasons this list is ordered by first word. (It doesn't use the defaultsort - which actually was correct in the case of Debussy.) --Kleinzach 04:23, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Portal:Opera for month of July

If you guys have other suggestions, please let me know. I take majority’s vote. - Jay (talk) 01:38, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Singer: Julie d'Aubigny (La Maupin) --Kleinzach 01:57, 26 June 2008 (UTC) P.S. For the future I recommend Jenny Lind which has good pictures. --Kleinzach 03:51, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

I have updated the portal for month of July as follows:-

- Jay (talk) 08:31, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

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