Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Opera/Archive 98

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Ombra mai fù

Maybe a few members of the Opera project could contribute to this discussion talk:Ombra mai fù#Requested move so it can be closed with the correct result. --Francesco Malipiero (talk) 17:01, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Some fruitful links

On the M. Owen Lee article is a fruitful list of article links to analyses of over a dozen major operas. They can be used as source material for the opera in question, or as External Links. I've already used one of them as an excellent source of analysis on the Turandot article. Softlavender (talk) 12:24, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Birth and death dates discussion

There is a discussion/straw poll at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Straw poll concerning removal of full birth and death dates from the parentheses in the lede. Basically the proposed recommendation is that

Gioachino Antonio Rossini (February 29, 1792 – November 13, 1868) ...

would become

Gioachino Antonio Rossini (1792 – 1868) ...

– Voceditenore (talk) 05:51, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Capitalization?

An anon ip recently altered the name of Emilio de Marchi to Emilio De Marchi. Which d/D is correct?4meter4 (talk) 04:03, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

The "other" Emilio De Marchi (a novelist, and much more famous in Italy than the tenor) seems to use the the capital "D", e.g. [1], [2]. A search on Emilio de Marchi (the tenor) in Italian printed sources tends to produce a a captial "D" most of the time too, e.g. [3], [4], [5]. Too bad we haven't got an autographed photo of him, which would settle it definitively. But on the whole, I think I'd move the page to Emilio De Marchi and leave Emilio de Marchi as a redirect. Voceditenore (talk) 08:15, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
Sounds good to me. Is there an admin in the project that we could contact to move it for us?4meter4 (talk) 08:32, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
Try asking Antandrus. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 08:47, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
Thanks. I left him a message.4meter4 (talk) 08:57, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
Done. Funny, it didn't look right to me at first -- does anyone here speak Italian? Why is "De" sometimes capitalized, and sometimes not? Antandrus (talk) 13:20, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
The Italian Wikipedia has about two dozen articles with "De Marchi" in their their title, all using uppercase "D"; see it:Search:intitle:de marchi, similarly here: Search:intitle:de marchi. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:50, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
  • (outdent) I speak Italian and in answer to Antandrus's question... because Italians can be somewhat random.;-) Seriously though, for modern names, i.e. late 19th century onwards, the upper case "D" tends to be used for surnames with "De" as well as "Di" (it:Giuseppe Di Stefano), "Della" (it:Lisa Della Casa) and "Del" it:Mario Del Monaco. But note the official website of Del/del Monaco's son [6]. See what I mean by random? Voceditenore (talk) 12:13, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Limuel B. Forgey III

Just found this article. Not sure if he is notable...4meter4 (talk) 23:42, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Amazing how these keep popping out of the woodwork. I've cleaned it up (it was full of COI hype) and referenced it, but I also have doubts about his notability. I have left a comment to that effect at Talk:Limuel B. Forgey III. – Voceditenore (talk) 09:14, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Helen Traubel

This article could use some references if anyone cares to pitch in.4meter4 (talk) 11:21, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

I've referenced it to within an inch of its life now. ;-) It's interesting to look at these 'old' WP articles (this one was started in 2004). People wrote off the tops of their heads and felt no need to source them with anything more than one or two external links, if that. Voceditenore (talk) 14:32, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
It's true. Actually there are a large number of famous opera singers bios that are unreferenced. I've considered compiling a list for the project.4meter4 (talk) 14:39, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Operas of the month: November

Since it's almost a new month, and I might get some time to edit in November, could I put a bid in for some of Gluck's Paris operas, namely Iphigénie en Aulide, Alceste (OK, that's Vienna too), Armide and Iphigénie en Tauride. Orfeo ed Euridice is already a pretty decent article. We might get the others up to something approaching that standard. --Folantin (talk) 12:24, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

  • Sounds good to me! Barring any last minute objections, I'll enter this into the OoM box for October. Of the 5 Spontini ones for "sprucing up" as the October OoM, only La vestale and Olimpie appear to have been worked on. So perhps the remaining 3 could be revisited later on. (The 150th anniversary of Spontini's death is in January 2011.) – Voceditenore (talk) 10:19, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
Well, I think I created most of the Spontini articles way back when (except La vestale). I thought I had more info on them but it seems I was over-optimistic. I could probably add Berlioz's opinions of the major works and create stubby articles on Alcidor and Nurmahal, but that's about it for the foreseeable future. --Folantin (talk) 10:33, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
Update: It's actually the 160th anniversary of Spontini's death next year so there's less urgency. Composers with round number anniversaries (multiples of 50 or 100) in 2011 include Jacopo Peri, Mondonville, Ambroise Thomas and Gian Carlo Menotti (I think). --Folantin (talk) 18:45, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Composers of the month: November

Any ideas? --Folantin (talk) 10:51, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

How about some of the red linked operas at List of premieres at the Metropolitan Opera?4meter4 (talk) 11:32, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
Good idea! I'll work up a draft and it to the CoM page. Voceditenore (talk) 14:24, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Jonathan/Jonathon Welch

There is an Australian tenor with the name Jonathon Welch. Jonathan Welch redirects there. However, there is a "Jonathan Welch" who won the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions in 1984 and has sung roles at the Met. Two different people?4meter4 (talk) 08:18, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Looks like it. Jonathon Welch's website[7] has an extensive history of his singing engagements and there's no mention of the Met at all. --GuillaumeTell 09:24, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
I can't seem to find anything outside the Met archives on the American.4meter4 (talk) 09:57, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
I agree with GuillaumeTell; there was considerable coverage of Jonathon Welch here in Oz and I'm sure a win in a Met audition would have been mentioned. I think the creation of the REDIRECT was unfortunate. Either that REDIRECT gets deleted or the entry at Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions should be unlinked (I corrected all other links to Jonathan Welch). -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 11:07, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Tagging of opera related articles

User:Kudpung

Kudpung appears to be on the warpath on opera related articles, and has been making many many tags and prods. Some of his edits have been quite useful and others not so much (some content changes for example have been off and some questionable prods). One example being his removal of Grove as a reference from the Shirley Love article. Particularly watch out for his "Failed verification" and "Dead Link" tags of which I have found many incorrectly placed ones. He also often puts ridiculous notability tags on articles with singers who have sung leading roles at the Met, La Scala, Covent Garden, etc. It would be good if project members take the time to shadow his contributions for a while and help where needed.4meter4 (talk) 07:53, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Here are some prods on clearly notable people that could use rescuing: Robin Follman, Robert Fertitta, Ginger Beazley, and Norman Foster (bass).4meter4 (talk) 07:59, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
I've left him a note on is talk page [8] asking him to please notify us as to his concerns and any article's he's prodded. We don't have every single singer on our individual watchlists and unfortunately, User:ArticleAlertbot, which we had subscribed to, is no longer functioning. Thus, we are going to lose a lot of useful articles which could easily have referencing and notability concerns addressed, simply because we don't know about them. Voceditenore (talk) 09:43, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
If editor is unwilling to work with in the greater interests of WP, then this blunt tool will help almost-instinct 13:56, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
I referenced and deprodded Dorothy Byrne (mezzo-soprano) and Norman Foster (bass). In my view Robert Fertitta and Ginger Beazley are valid PRODS and probably not worth rescuing. Both appear to be vanity pieces. Voceditenore (talk) 10:20, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
Fertitta is borderline I agree, although I did find some press on him surrounding his performances in Dralion. However, Beazley founded a music school/communitry arts organization (Ars Nova School of the Arts and the Ars Nova Arts Council) in Huntsville, AL which also mounts operas in that city. The local paper has reviews like this [9]. That, coupled with having taught some important opera singers should make her notable.4meter4 (talk) 10:38, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
Ars Nova School of the Arts is a vanity piece too, and if you look at that local article, their productions are sung by high-school kids. Re her student Angela Brown, one relatively notable student doth not a notable teacher make. I think the articles on her and the school would be unlikely to pass AfDs. Voceditenore (talk) 11:02, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
She is also Susanna Phillips' teacher. But maybe two isn't notable... 4meter4 (talk) 11:05, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
Not surpisingly that article was started by the same editor as the other two back in 2005.[10] Phillips is sort of notable (article full of puffery with poor referencing), but, no I don't think that confers enough notability on Beazley. Voceditenore (talk) 11:17, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
Ok.4meter4 (talk) 11:25, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

I find it a bit difficult to maintain good faith when Kudpung doubts Cynthia Makris' notablity. On the other hand, this edit to Makris' page and this one to Martha Lipton's let me doubt that editor's competency. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:42, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

To be fair, the only supporting references when he made that comment were from her own or her husband's websites. We have to make sure that in future BLPs (or in ones we're keen to keep) that there are reliable independent sources supporting notability, not just claims to it. I don't question his good faith at all, although he is rather brusque. There is a bit of problem in that he is not familiar with the area, and tends to apply WP:ENT rather than WP:MUSIC, and has made a few slips, but he's doing very useful (and incredibly tedious) work on the whole. It's one of those jobs that I keep thinking I should get 'round to, and then just can't face. There's no doubt that rumblings are again afoot for mass deletion of unreferenced BLPs, so we might as well be prepared. Voceditenore (talk) 14:50, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

AfD: Limuel B. Forgey III

This article is being discussed for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Limuel B. Forgey III if members wish to comment. Voceditenore (talk) 18:40, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Split of Category:Opera singer stubs

Greetings! I see you have recently created one or more new stub templates or categories. As it states at Wikipedia:Stub, at the top of most stub categories, and in many other places on Wikipedia, it is recommended that new stub types be proposed prior to creation at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals. This helps to reach consensus about whether the new stub type is already covered by existing stub types, whether it is named according to stub naming guidelines, whether it is otherwise correctly formatted, whether it reaches the standard threshold for creation of a new stub type, and whether it crosses existing stub type hierarchies. Your new stub type is currently listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Discoveries, where comments are welcome as to any rationale for this stub type. Please, in future, consider proposing new stub types first at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals! Dawynn (talk) 12:40, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Actually, it wasn't proposed or discussed here either. OK who's the culprit? 'Fess up!. . . Just joking, but seriously, it's a good idea to propose this sort of stuff before creating it, particularly if 2 projects are affected. I've commented over at WikiProject Stub sorting here. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 09:11, 30 October 2010 (UTC)
I am fessing up. I'm the culprit. lol Sorry for creating any issues. I was being perhaps too WP:Bold (although I do seem to be the only project member that periodically goes through the stub lists to make sure they are sorted propperly). I left some comments as well.4meter4 (talk) 09:25, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Creating opera bio stubs with poor referencing – a modest proposal

I'm concerned about large numbers of articles on living (or possibly living) opera people being created with a single inadequate reference. We've now got a huge (and growing) backlog of such articles to deal with. I'm requesting a voluntary moratorium on this for members who are creating them. (Obviously we can't do anything about what anyone else does.) The following should never be used as the sole or main source, and in my view should only go in external links for an article.

  • operissimo.com – None of their bios list any sources themselves. Also, artists can pay €79 per year to have their biography uploaded and featured. Thus, it can't always be considered as a source independent of the subject.
  • bach-cantatas.com – Most of their bios are lifted from Wikipedia or very closely paraphrased from the artist's (or their agent's) websites. They are not independent of the subject. Some are based on liner notes, but you should cross-check with the liner notes themsleves, rather than use a second-hand source.
  • classicalsinger.com – Articles in their magazine (subscription access only) yes, but not their online singer profiles, e.g. [11]. They are not independent of the subject.
  • BBC Music – This sub-site of the BBC posts reader-generated reviews, and their "biographies" are copyedited mirrors of Wikipedia.

If the subject of your article is living, or possibly living, make sure you have at least three reliable, independent references, at least one of which confirms DoB and place of birth (if known), training and debut before you go live with it. Almost all notable singers will have at least two recordings on notable classical labels. Make sure you include them in the article as this establishes notability. All claims to performances should be referenced either to a review, a reliable biographical source, or opera house performance records. All awards should be refererenced too.

If little or no biographical information is available in reliable sources for a singer, apart from their performances, then you should think twice about creating an article about them at this time. We really need to go for quality rather than quantity. Voceditenore (talk) 12:22, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Understood, but. I am dealing mostly with German language singers for whom bach-cantatas sometimes is the only reference in English. I do try to support it by other refs, but that is hard especially for the older singers who never had an agent, smile. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:02, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
Is there anything to prevent German-language sources being used as references? It will require Good Faith from the monolingual amongst us - but we always do that anyway ;-) almost-instinct 13:58, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
(edit conflict) It is a problem for singers who are only or primarily written about in non-English sources, but those are perfectly acceptable and are actually preferred if they are more reliable (in the Wikipedia sense) than the available English sources. Voceditenore (talk) 14:05, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
When using a foreign language source to support a non-trivial assertion, I usually add the quote in the original language in a footnote. Geeesh! All this brouhaha makes me glad that I only write about dead singers. Preferably dead for so long, that no one has any opinions about 'em.;-) Voceditenore (talk) 15:03, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
One benefit of our creating pages of emerging notable singers is that their agents / friends / admirers are less likely to create a page of fluff, puff & cruft. almost-instinct 15:32, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
Oh, you dreamer, you! ;-) Alas, they just march right in over-write it with.. er.. fluff, puff & cruft + copyvio too. I've cleaned up more of these "contributions" than I care to mention. And when you get a very determined fan, well, it's just not worth the struggle. See Talk:Lorenzo Regazzo. – Voceditenore (talk) 16:29, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
(edit conflict, @ voceditenore's suggestion) Good point, translating. - But for most of the bio's you really don't need language expertise to recognize names of people and places, in such a case I won't translate. I have a living singer on DYK tonight, Christiane Kohl, no problem referencing her, "Your" Janis Martin (not dead!) to follow tomorrow, q5, smile, I found the Isolde I heard in the Bayreuth ref. Why an international festival as Bayreuth doesn't supply English bios, is beyond my understanding. (At least I didn't find one for her, only conductors.) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:35, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Antonio Tamburini

The page for this rather important baritone was created four years ago thus. The list of created roles is dubious eg the bass role of Alfonso in Lucrezia Borgia (opera). Has anyone got a reliable source of info to correct this? almost-instinct 10:24, 5 November 2010 (UTC

Have added sources and removed the errors in role creations. See Talk:Antonio Tamburini for more. It still needs cross-checking for the other roles and more inline cites in addition to the basic sources section. Voceditenore (talk) 12:05, 5 November 2010 (UTC)
You lovely people :-) almost-instinct 13:29, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Verdi's best opera

I don't like the tag on Messa da Requiem. I raised the question at Classical music, someone did a nice instrumentation table, then silence. Do I find here improvement for Verdi's best opera? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:49, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't like the tags either, but they are correct. The Form section is pure unreferenced personal analysis. I'm not saying it isn't true, but in its present form, it doesn't belong there without a supporting source of some kind. There are other random unreferenced comments in the article that should be removed or moved to another section. The layout is also very poorly structured and bitty. I could tackle some of those issues in a few weeks, but am up to my eyeballs in other stuff at the moment. Voceditenore (talk) 11:39, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply, but sad to hear that it will take time, because the time to remember the dead seems to be now, certainly no later than 21 November. I wrote the program for our concerts, but that was for church use, not encyclopedic. I still hope, someone more competent will do something about that great work!! What I could do (and did) was filling soloist and dates in the recordings and sort them, please check, I feel still new here, smile, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:08, 9 November 2010 (UTC).
I am very impressed with the improvements, thank you helpers! The de-WP has a picture of the title page of the first edition, might that be included also? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:14, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for that as well! Going to the Main page on Sunday, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:10, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

RIP Shirley Verrett

I just read in yesterday's paper that Shirley Verrett has died. Our article on her is rather pathetic at the moment. It would be great if we could improve the article this week as people are sure to be reading this page frequently.4meter4 (talk) 10:36, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

A new de-article has more on private life and voice. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:16, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
True but it's all unreferenced. Voceditenore (talk) 16:38, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

The Opera of Koroglu

I have added the WikiProject Opera banner to the talk-page of this "article". I really don't know what to make of this. Comments?--Francesco Malipiero (talk) 23:30, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

I'll have a look, but I don't know much about it. I've removed references to it from the main opera article as this is obviously undue weight. --Folantin (talk) 09:28, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
There's an article on the composer (but no article on the opera) in Grove Opera. There, his name is given as Uzeir Hajibeyov and the opera (his "most highly-acclaimed work ... in which he achieved a fusion of Western formal principles with native melodic elements") is given as "Kyor-oglï". I suppose the question is whether this opera counts as "part of the Western classical music tradition". --GuillaumeTell 11:20, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
Oh, I'm almost certain it does. Most national opera has folk elements. It's probably the Azerbaijani equivalent of other Transcaucasian operas, such as Zakaria Paliashvili's Abesalom da Eteri (Georgian) and Armen Tigranian's Anoush (Armenian). That's not the problem. The problem is whether this is a copyvio and the issue of undue weight in the main opera article (the latter now resolved). --Folantin (talk) 12:23, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
I can't see any obvious evidence of copyvio - Google just supplies WP mirrors, clones, etc. and there's nothing obvious that I can find in Google Books. --GuillaumeTell 18:07, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
A Bulgarian IP tagged it as copyvio, citing this link: http://great.az/index.php?newsid=8838. The Wikipedia section "About this opera" is indeed the same as the paragraph devoted to the work on that page. I'm going to remove it. --Folantin (talk) 18:32, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
Ah, OK. And the synopsis seems, on a cursory inspection, to have been copy-and-pasted from here. --GuillaumeTell 21:27, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
  • (outdent) The synopsis was verbatim from the source. I've removed it, added a viable lead paragraph and an image, and cleaned up the rest, especially the external links some of which were duplicates of other links, and others to potentially copyvio videos. I also changed the reference for the recording because it linked to a forum which had posted RapidShare files of the recording. The page needs to be moved. "The Opera of Koroglu" is not the title of the opera. Note the title in the Turkish Wikipedia: Köroğlu (opera) and the Azerbajaini Wikipedia: Koroğlu (opera). Any thoughts on the spelling/title to move it to? We could use "Koroglu" (the standard form used in English pages and translations on Azebaijan sites, including the label that released the recording or "Koroğlu" the Azerbaijani spelling. Does it need (opera) as a disambiguator? Voceditenore (talk) 10:00, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
I'd favour using the Azerbaijani spelling with the accent, since Azerbaijani is now written in Roman script and it's standard for us to maintain the accents of such languages in our titles (e.g. Libuše (opera)). I'd still keep the (opera) disambiguator because Koroglu is primarily the hero of the Epic of Köroğlu and I think most people looking for the name would want to see that page first. --Folantin (talk) 10:18, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
Shouldn't we be consistent and either use the same spelling as the Epic of Köroğlu or rename the latter? Incidentally, Koroglu and Köroğlu and Epic of Koeroglu redirect there, and then there's Koroghlu... --GuillaumeTell 11:08, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
The spelling used in Epic of Köroğlu is the Turkish spelling of the name. I'd leave it alone and favour Folantin's proposal: Koroğlu (opera) - Voceditenore (talk) 11:14, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
I've been bold and moved it to Koroğlu (opera). I've also made redirects from Koroglu (opera) and Koroghlu (opera). Voceditenore (talk) 13:20, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Son and Stranger

Er, I've lost track of the rules....but shouldn't this be listed primarily under its German title, with a redirect from the English title?--Smerus (talk) 12:04, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, per Wikipedia:WikiProject_Opera#Operas:_original_vs_English_translation. --GuillaumeTell 01:02, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
Thanks, done. --Smerus (talk) 13:31, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Opera articles have been selected for the Wikipedia 0.8 release

Version 0.8 is a collection of Wikipedia articles selected by the Wikipedia 1.0 team for offline release on USB key, DVD and mobile phone. Articles were selected based on their assessed importance and quality, then article versions (revisionIDs) were chosen for trustworthiness (freedom from vandalism) using an adaptation of the WikiTrust algorithm.

We would like to ask you to review the Opera articles and revisionIDs we have chosen. Selected articles are marked with a diamond symbol (♦) to the right of each article, and this symbol links to the selected version of each article. If you believe we have included or excluded articles inappropriately, please contact us at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8 with the details. You may wish to look at your WikiProject's articles with cleanup tags and try to improve any that need work; if you do, please give us the new revisionID at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8. We would like to complete this consultation period by midnight UTC on Monday, October 11th.

We have greatly streamlined the process since the Version 0.7 release, so we aim to have the collection ready for distribution by the end of October, 2010. As a result, we are planning to distribute the collection much more widely, while continuing to work with groups such as One Laptop per Child and Wikipedia for Schools to extend the reach of Wikipedia worldwide. Please help us, with your WikiProject's feedback!

For the Wikipedia 1.0 editorial team, SelectionBot 23:25, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Discussion

We ought to have a discussion about this. First, some statistics: of the 100 articles chosen, 29 are about operas (plus 1 List of Important Operas), 42 are about composers, 6 are about theatres and/or opera companies (Her Majesty's, Jay Pritzker Pavilion, The Met, the ROH, Sydney Opera House, Vienna State Opera), 13 are about singers, 1 is a director (Visconti) and 8 are none of the above (Opera, Opera seria, Bel canto, Singing, Aria, Baritone, Bass (vocal range), Falsetto).

Second, a breakdown of the operas by composer: Verdi: 9; Mozart: 5; Puccini: 3; Other composers: twelve of them, with one opera each. NB Die Walküre is included - it's been bannered wrongly with both the Wagner banner and WPO's, and it's in the Wagner Project's list of suggested articles so shouldn't be in ours.

Further comments:

  • Balance: I feel that there are too many composers and not enough operas. Composers who could be omitted (IMO): Zemlinsky, Vivaldi(?), Cui, D'Albert, Busoni, Falla, M-A Charpentier(?), Ravel(?), Reich, Arne, Méhul, Kabalevsky, A Scarlatti, Previn. Operas that could replace them might include more Handel, Gluck, R Strauss and at least one by Britten, J Strauss, Janacek, Donizetti, Rossini, Bellini, maybe others.
  • Articles of dubious relevance: Her Majesty's Theatre (no longer does opera), Jay Pritzker Pavilion (doesn't do much opera), Falsetto (not exactly a core subject), Andrea Bocelli (not exactly an opera singer).
  • Singers: not a bad list, leaving aside Bocelli, but only Jenny Lind, Caruso and Marian Anderson aren't current/recent.
  • Lists not listed: Major opera composers? Opera companies? Opera genres? The opera corpus?

Way to proceed: perhaps agree which articles we don't want to include, then decide which articles should replace them (some might need beefing up...) --GuillaumeTell 17:01, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

I agree completely with the above comments, especially in relation to marginal composers and would be ok with seeing all the ones listed above go. Maybe those who selected felt that some of the articles themselves were more complete that others, but to omit some operas by composers such as Bellini and Donizetti is cend better to go t=with the ist he has prepared than to waste time quibbling.tainly wrong. And we can loose Bocelli easily enough. I think that it might mean working on making one of each of the proposed inclusions (say a Donizetti opera article) look really good. Viva-Verdi (talk) 17:15, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
I wouldn't personally agree with all of Guillaume's outs as composers, but then we are all going to have such opinions and better to go with the suggestions he has made than waste time quibbling. Thanks to him for making this proposal.--Smerus (talk) 17:36, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
I tend not to treat these Wikipedia Version X drives seriously. The whole operation seems to be run by bots. FWIW I tend to agree with GT's choices but I'd rather drop Adolphe Adam (surely better covered under Wikipedia Project:Ballet) and Ambroise Thomas rather than the composers he has put question marks after, but on the whole my attitude is not much more than *shrug*. (NB: I did quite a bit of work on Jean-Philippe Rameau once. It's far from perfect but it's quite a substantial article - 45k). --Folantin (talk) 17:44, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
Well, in response to Smerus, we have 3 weeks to make up our minds, so there's no immediate need to adopt all (or any!) of my suggestions, plus other WPO members may have things to say. In response to Folantin, I did actually intend to include Adam and Thomas (much as I love Mignon) in the hit-list, and I'd certainly vote Rameau in as a replacement for Charpentier. Also, although the list was apparently run by a bot, we do have the opportunity to make comments, and lots of WikiProjects have already done so - the action is at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8. I'm thinking of setting up a sub-page with a concrete list of my proposed deletions and additions. Members could then vote yea or nay to those and suggest alternatives for consideration. We could allow a week for this, perhaps, then have a vote on any loose ends. As Viva-Verdi suggests, we might want to work on a few articles that aren't in the current list. Meanwhile, unless anyone objects, I'll put down a marker at the Version 0.8 talk page later today, citing Walküre, Bocelli, Her Majesty's, Jay Pritzker Pavilion and Falsetto as needing to be replaced. --GuillaumeTell 21:38, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
Update: marker now put down. --GuillaumeTell 00:02, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
I think there may be a misunderstanding here. I think the process is that the bot decides which articles have the appropriate combination of quality and importance to be included. Only once this is done does it work out what projects these articles belong to. So articles that are not that important to us may still get in because they are of greater importance to the project as a whole. We just get notified of them because they include our project tag somewhere.--Peter cohen (talk) 23:02, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
No misunderstanding as far as I'm concerned. (NB: I'm interested to see that most articles tagged with Opera Project banners have been assessed, which wasn't the case last time I had a look. Maybe we ought to fire up the Importance tag as well.) --GuillaumeTell 23:44, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
It's just occurred to me that quite a few of the composers in our list are also in the Composers Project's list and maybe elsewhere as well (Classical Music Project?). That might give us more room for more operas and other opera-specific topics. --GuillaumeTell 17:46, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
  • A few points (out-denting):

    1. There are actually 145 articles, the link only goes to the first page. Click "Next 100 entries" at the bottom of the page

    2. The idea isn't that an article under a particular project is categorized as pertaining to the subject of opera. They're only using projects to help them weed out badly/written etc. articles and to suggest additions. There has been a practice here (which I disagree with) of no double bannering. If Die Walkure is listed as OP and RWP, it doesn't matter, they won't include the article twice in the actual edition.

    3. As far as I know there is no upper limit to the articles that can be included for any one project/subject and the "Release version" will not be grouped by subject—it will just be a shorter version of the regular WP.

    4. Many of our articles are assessed as "start" but are actually much better than that and hence may have slipped through the robots' net.

    5. GuillaumeTell's idea of starting a separate sub-page is a good idea. But I'd use it to weed out articles that are in a poor state or completely unrelated to opera. Like it or not Bocelli is related to opera and his page is very popular. As there seems to be no upper limit, we don't need to exclude articles to "make way" for others. I'd also suggest we add articles there which are important and of a sufficiently decent state to be included with a separate section for ones which are important but need us to work on them.

    Voceditenore (talk) 07:07, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Late to the party, as usual. Bass (voice type) is one of the stragglers still awaiting review in the list of articles with potential copyright violations, and as such it seems a poor choice for the list of selected opera topics. More generally, having slogged through several of those "voice-type type" articles in that context, I would suggest that we should inflict none of them on an unsuspecting public through offline publication. Everything I have seen in them has been offputting and murky, written like a crib from somebody's not-first-rank 1907 freshman vocal physiology textbook. Drhoehl (talk) 02:48, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your careful discussion, and I apologise for any confusion. Peter cohen is correct - many articles are included because of their importance elsewhere, but they are tagged for Opera so you are informed. In such cases, for example composers, I would hesitate to remove them unless the Composers WikiProject indicated the same thing. (Copyright violations and the like are another matter - we've removed the specific Ring Cycle entries for that very reason, on the recommendation of the Wagner project.) However, we can consider adding a few articles which you propose, just in case of incorrect assessments or other flaws in the bot's list (e.g., if the article was marked too low because it was renamed shortly before the listing). I'm still working through the (very long!) list of comments from all the WikiProjects, so there is more time - though we hope to wrap things up pretty soon. Please can you summarise the consensus on (a) any articles that are purely opera and need to be removed, and (b) any articles that the bot overlooked? List (b) may be longer than (a)! Many thanks, Walkerma (talk) 03:50, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
Thanks, Walkerma. I've made two separate lists for suggestions below. If any members want articles added or removed please add them to one of the appropriate lists below. Make sure they aren't already listed by checking Page 1 and Page 2 of the Wikipedia 0.8 release selections. Voceditenore (talk) 11:22, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
Last month I sorted and categorised the articles on the list and the result can be seen at Wikipedia:WikiProject Opera/Article list (the figures add up to 144, so I've either miscounted or omitted an article). I hope that's helpful. Then the comments stopped, the original deadline passed and I started doing other things. --GuillaumeTell 11:36, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
No you counted correctly. There were originally 145 on the Wikipedia 0.8 release selections list but one was later removed for copyvio, I gather. Voceditenore (talk) 11:52, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

List A. suggested removals

Note: If the article is also bannered with another project, do not suggest it here unless it is a copyright violation or has other serious concerns, e.g. extensive factual inaccuracy, poor or no referencing. Please give a brief reason for adding an article to this list. There is no limit on articles that can go in Wikipedia 0.8 release, therefore there is no need to remove an article to "make room" for another one. If you think another article should also be included please list it in List B. below.

List B. suggested additions

Note: There is no limit on the number of articles suggested. They do not have to "replace" another one. Please also give a brief reason for adding an article to this list.
I agree. Voceditenore (talk) 11:55, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
OK, I've added List of major opera composers - the version as of now. Thanks, Walkerma (talk) 14:05, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Singer categories

User:Gerda Arendt has brought up some interesting questions on my talk page at User talk:4meter4#Better cat. The basic issue is what to do with classical vocalists who primarily sing the concert repertoire and not opera. They really don't seem to belong in the operatic by voice type cats, but the general "category:soprano", "category:tenor" etc. can easily draw non-classical singers. I'm wondering what the best way to solve this problem is? One possible solution that occurs to me is to move the operatic by voice type cats to a more inclusive classical voice type cat. For example "category:operatic sopranos" could be renamed "category:classical sopranos". This would therefore include singers who sing classical music, either the concert or operatic repertoire, and prevent the obvious dilema in dealing with singers who performed both but maybe specialized in one more than the other. Another option would be to create the classical singers by voice type cats while keeping the operatic singers by voice type cats as a sub cat of the classical singers by voice type cats. We could still keep the opera singers by nationality cats. What do you all think?4meter4 (talk) 06:19, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

I like your first solution - move all classically-trained singers into the classical voice categories. -- Ssilvers (talk) 05:18, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
I like the first solution too, plus keeping the opera singers by nationality cats. I would suggest though, that we continue to banner the talk pages of oratorio, Bach, etc. singers with WPO because the the Classical Music project doesn't really have the resources to look after them. They've stopped assessment and have quite a lot on their plate with all the classical instrumentalists. Voceditenore (talk) 19:36, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
I completely agree with you voceditenore.4meter4 (talk) 20:09, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
Since no one has opposed this change, I think we should implement it. I've never moved a cat before. Does anyone know what the propper procedure is for moving a category?4meter4 (talk) 08:34, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
Any update on this? Have the categories been created? Voceditenore (talk) 11:41, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
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