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lang template

The names of works, and other terms, not in English, should be marked up with the {{lang}} template, using the appropriate two-letter language code; for example: {{lang|de|Von heute auf morgen}}.Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 13:19, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Umm, that code still gives: Von heute auf morgen. Do you have a harder sell for using it? Sparafucil (talk) 10:36, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
It's supposed to do that. It's "invisible". For the reasons why the hidden code it can be helpful, see Template:Lang#Rationale. Voceditenore (talk) 10:59, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
A very high proportion of our articles contain foreign-language material. Adding these tags looks like a horrific amount of work (opera titles, first lines of arias...) for not very much, if any, end-product. CJK is (I presume) limited to artists' names. Articles with Cyrillic characters might be worth doing, I suppose. --GuillaumeTell 11:37, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
I agree. I have to confess, I generally don't bother with it, although the aim is laudable. No doubt some bot will be invented to run around adding it, although Lord knows how it will know what language it should template for... Voceditenore (talk) 12:31, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

CoM - format changes?

Back in October, we briefly discussed possible changes to the approach in this section to be further discussed this month and implemented in January.[1] The basic idea would be for this section to shift the focus from creating articles to one more focussed on improving core content.

  • One format would be to replace CoM with OoM (Opera of the Month), choosing a single key work or group of works (e.g. Mozart's Da Ponte operas) to improve.
  • Another possibility is to retain CoM (and use it to work on the composer's bio) and add OoM, preferably(?) with an opera or group of operas by that composer.

This relationship could be further extended to the SoM for singers (especially red-links or stubs) which appear in the CoM/OoM articles. This approach (in an informal way) worked quite well last month as we tackled various issues relating to Puccini, his operas, and his singers in preparation for the 150th birthday and the December Opera Portal. Since the next portal change will be in February, it could give us some incentive for the new format. Thoughts?... Voceditenore (talk) 12:40, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

I'd prefer the first option (or some variant thereon). I think CotM as it is has run out of steam. We've really covered the major works by the major composers in at least stub form. The more specialised areas are best dealt with by editors with an interest in such areas rather than via collaboration. We've got breadth, now let's aim for depth of coverage. The Puccini approach looks like an interesting model. For example, one month we could take Pelléas et Mélisande since 2009 is the 50th anniversary of the death of its librettist, Maurice Maeterlinck. We could develop other articles about musical works inspired by Materlinck (e.g. Dukas's opera Ariane et Barbe-bleue) and create one on Debussy's unfinished opera projects (some of them are substantial and have been completed by other composers and staged), as well as pages on singers associated with Debussy. --Folantin (talk) 13:12, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
I like that idea too, and especially your suggestion of Pelléas et Mélisande. The more possibilities for participation the better. Some members are better at and/or prefer working on bios, others on actual works. Plus, part of a good reading experience in an opera article is being able to follow the links and find decent articles where'er you walk. For example, I just expanded and added references to a stub Il Bellerofonte and found that the articles on the composer and librettist are rather poor. Plus, the lead singers, are not well covered at the moment: Anton Raaff, Caterina Gabrielli (both stubby) and Ferdinando Mazzanti (non-existant). I'm not suggesting it for OoM though.;-) Voceditenore (talk) 13:36, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
I like both ideas that Voceditenore has suggested. However, I would like to see us continue to create some new opera articles and continue to turn red links blue at the opera corpus. My general idea a few months back was to find a way to work on both quality and quantity. Perhaps we could pick one major composer (or at least a composer with a major opera) each month and one minor composer with associated operas and hopefully singers as well. This way we would get to work on the quality of core articles together and continue to expand our coverage (although at a much slower rate). We might also consider changing singers of the month to a broader biographies of the month to cover other associated people such as librettists and conductors if we wanted to. Also, I really like the check list that we did for Puccini and I personally would like to see this sort of evaluation repeated every month. Perhaps we could formalize that into the new process as well.Nrswanson (talk) 08:00, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
Just let me know, and 'll update the templates. 08:22, 16 December 2008 (UTC) (This offer was posted by User:Shoemaker's Holiday.)
I'm happy with any or all of the above suggestions (but I'll be passing on Pel and Mel, which I really really don't care for). I've got my own list of opera articles to create or improve (next up is Michael Berkeley's For You) but will join in here if the subject is something that interests me. --GuillaumeTell 12:06, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Further suggestions for revamping X o M

Based on the above discussion, and remember that whatever we decide on, it's not writ in stone. We can try out the new approach for a couple of months and see how it works out. I'll put a comment section for each bit.Voceditenore (talk) 15:38, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Composer of the Month

  • We could keep Composer of the Month, since as Nrswanson points out, there are still plenty of red links in the Opera corpus and it gives members a wider choice of what to work on. Here are some possible groups based on the Corpus. I've chosen composers who were contemporaries of Debussy (give or take 10 years).
Italian composers
  1. Umberto Giordano (1867-1948): La cena delle beffe, Mese Mariano
  2. Ruggiero Leoncavallo (1857-1919): Chatterton, Edipo re, Goffredo Mameli, La jeunesse de Figaro, Maià, Der Roland von Berlin, Zingari
  3. Pietro Mascagni (1863-1945): Zanetto
  4. Antonio Smareglia (1854–1929): Nozze Istriane
  5. Vincenzo Valente (1855–1921): I granatieri
Spanish composers
  1. Isaac Albéniz (1860–1909): Henry Clifford Pepita Jiménez
  2. Enrique Granados (1867-1916): Maria del Carmen
  3. Amadeo Vives (1871–1932): Doña Francisquita
French composers
  1. Alfred Bruneau (1857–1934): Angelo L'enfant roi, Messidor, L'ouragan, La rêve
  2. Gustave Charpentier (1860–1956): Julien
  3. Camille Erlanger (1863–1919): Le Juif polonais
  4. Albert Roussel (1869-1937): La naissance de la lyre, Le testament de la tante Caroline
  5. Erik Satie (1866 –1925): Geneviève de Brabant

- Voceditenore (talk) 15:38, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Comments

To be honest I'd be hard pressed to find information about most of those works. --Folantin (talk) 13:48, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

I could manage La cena delle beffe and Maria del Carmen with the aid of my old Wexford programmes. I might possibly have one for Aunt Caroline's Will, but that was a student performance about 40 years ago so may not have much, if any, background. --GuillaumeTell 18:57, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

I wasn't suggesting all of them ;-) - the above was just a list from which to choose, assuming we still want to continue this feature. Personally, I would go with the Spanish chaps since I can get stuff for them, and GT also has stuff for one of them. We also have kind of big gap in our Spanish opera/zarzuela coverage. As for Giordano, see my comments under Opera of the Month. Voceditenore (talk) 07:05, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Singer of the Month

Do away with Singer of the Month and incorporate it into a more 'global' Opera of the Month - Voceditenore (talk) 15:38, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Comments

Opera of the Month

This is how it might look...

The Opera of the Month is Pelléas et Mélisande by Claude Debussy. We would like to expand this to at least B Class. Other work on articles related to this opera and its composer includes:
Singers connected with Pelléas et Mélisande
Other operas by Debussy
Other operas based on plays by Maeterlinck

- Voceditenore (talk) 15:38, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Comments

Very good. As well as being the 50th anniversary of the death of Maeterlinck, 2009 is also the 200th anniversary of the death of Edgar Allan Poe, so this is a highly appropriate selection. --Folantin (talk) 13:39, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

I rather like the idea of this kind of format too. After looking at the sad state of Andrea Chenier today, I was thinking this might be a good candidate for February. It has red linked and long overdue articles on the principal singers, Umberto Giordano is entirely unreferenced, and his remaining red-linked opera articles could go in there too. Voceditenore (talk) 07:12, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Overall comments

Are people happy with the proposed changes, i.e., adding OoM; keeping CoM for now (with selection still to be decided); and incorporating SoM into OoM? I'd like to give User:Shoemaker's Holiday enough time to make the new OoM template for us and January draws nigh. Voceditenore (talk) 07:25, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Fine by me. --GuillaumeTell 18:23, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Newly discovered libretto

Colleagues may like to look at this which was sent to me anonymously. (I wish I could claim the credit for it). It could probably do with some hefty editing, which I am not up to. The quartet at the end of Act I seems highly appealing.--Smerus (talk) 22:06, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

PS: Happy Chanukah
Unfortunately, Wikipedia doesn't seem to have room for these things; fortunately, there's Uncyclopedia which specialises in this genre. I took the liberty to publish it there, after a superficial scrub according the Opera Project's guidelines. AFAIK there's only one other opera article there (The Marriage ofFigaro) (which, if I remember correctly, briefly found its way to Wikipedia once. Michael Bednarek (talk) 03:15, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

User:Robertgreer has been adding ballet tags (portal and ballet navigation template) in some composers and opera houses articles. I have reverted but he put them back in some of articles. I do not like edit warring therefore I like to hear opinion from you guys. Secondly, someone added an infobox in Bolshoi Theatre. I haven’t removed it but like to know majority’s opinion about infoboxes in opera house articles. - Jay (talk) 14:02, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Kleinzach has also reverted him at La Scala. That big ballet navbox is basically "project spam" in my view. It adds nothing to the article, but worse, its size and vertical layout wreck the image format of the pages it's added to. I would have no objection if the ballet folk developed a horizontal navbox to be placed at the bottom of the articles which are also relevant to ballet. But until then, the vertical one should go. I have no objection to the addition of the small ballet portal logo to relevant articles, though. It's usually down in he external links section and unobtrusive.
As for the infobox on Bolshoi Theatre, it's quite common to have these in articles on theatres, especially those which come under multiple projects. I don't mind them as long as they are accurate, but this is a clear case of infoboxes being misleading because of their restrictive fields which don't accommodate the more complicated reality and/or drive-by editors who don't know the subject or really read the article. Take a look at the current construction data.[2] It was never demolished only damaged on those dates, but you'd never know that if you read only the infobox. Likewise the current building was begun in 1824 according to the article, and the previous start date (1781) refers to a completely different theatre which once stood there, the Petrovka Theatre. Aaargh! Voceditenore (talk) 15:37, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
Update: I edited the infobox to at least make it accurate.[3] I was going to add the name of the architect, until it showed up under... er... "design team". Geeesh!Voceditenore (talk) 15:46, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
Ah, I see that Nrswanson has turned the vertical monster into a well behaved horizontal creature.[4] I have no problem with this being added to the bottom of articles that relate both to opera and ballet. Voceditenore (talk) 07:56, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
I have tamed the beast! lol Unfortunately this template is placed in so many articles that I don't have the time or inclination to move it to the bottom of every page it is on. However, I have had a nice chat with User:Robertgreer who also seems to be very happy with the new template. Problem solved.Nrswanson (talk) 15:31, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

AFD for List of vocal ranges

I have nominated List of vocal ranges for deletion. The terms listed are voice types and not vocal ranges. Although the terms are related, they are not the same.Nrswanson (talk) 16:15, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

This page was recently renamed List of opera singers but the list is not really a list of opera singers. I moved it to list of voice types, but I really see no point to have such a list. I would appriciate some of your thoughts at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of vocal ranges.Nrswanson (talk) 06:20, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Two odd articles

A SPA created two dubious articles and I'm not sure how to handle them: List of opera accompanists and Malina Dimitrova. I'm almost tempted to do a speedy delete on the list and the other may or may not be legit.Nrswanson (talk) 19:50, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Well, the former is certainly a mess and needs lots of work. Is it worth it? Viva-Verdi (talk) 00:15, 20 December 2008 (UTC). Based on a googling of her name, there appears to be nothing out there to justify keeping this article. I see that the "List" has already gone....Viva-Verdi (talk) 00:42, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
I also looked - nothing. The article is so badly written and formatted that it's hard to tell if she was simply a répétiteur who worked behind the scenes on her husband's various performances or whether she was also his concert and broadcast accompanist. In any case there are no references supplied at all, even off-line ones, or the actual details of recordings, broadcasts etc on which she is credited, if indeed she was. The article was written by User:Liuben who is her son, Liuben Dimitrov. He made several stabs at the article [5]. He recently wrote an article about himself and his piano duo Genova & Dimitrov too, speedy-deleted for copyvio from his agent's web site. See [6]. Yesterday, he made a redirect page to the deleted article - Liuben Dimitrov. In July 2007, he wrote an article on his father Stefan Dimitrov, multiply deleted for copy vio, before the admins eventually gave up or he managed to convince them that he owned the copyright.[7]. The ones for both his father and mother, are needless to say full of peacock terms and definitely do not take a neutral point of view. As you can see from his talk page, he doesn't really understand WP policies and takes rather aggressive measures and against those who thwart him, i.e. he vandalizes the talk pages of admins who delete "his" articles. I also cursorily tried searching for her with the Bulgarian spelling of her name. [8], possibly more digging might find something. But I'm not inclined to spend the time on it, if the original author isn't. Voceditenore (talk) 07:11, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
Hmmm... perhaps we should take this to WP:AN. It sounds like this user may need to be dealt with by admins since he is a repeated problem.Nrswanson (talk) 15:27, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
Not worth it at this point. The user talk page vandalism was last July/August. I'm sure his father is notable, although the article is a mess. The mother, in her own right, quite possibly not. I've left a message on the Malina Dimitrova talk page outlining what he needs to do. If no references can be found, then perhaps in the New Year take it to AfD. The ironic thing is that he or rather Genova & Dimitrov are probably notable enough for an article. [9]. He just doesn't seem to 'get' the WP copyright policy and why it needs to be strict. Voceditenore (talk) 16:51, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
Hello from Liuben. It was very interesting and sad to red your comments about the pages I have tryed to create in Wikipedia. You are discussing about the "Conflict of Interests" just because was honest enough to write you that Stefan Dimitrov was not only the opera basso but also my father, or that Malina Dimitrova was my mother beside being the highly acclaimed Pianist or that the Genova & Dimitrov pano duo who was chosen to open the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City - it's me and my partner. What conflict of interests would be there if you wouldn't know all this??? I am not trying to reach anything through "aggressive means", or to "manage to convince" somebody of anything, I am just soooooooo tired to communicate to humans that hide themseles behind short and dry internet phrases and that don't even try to understand first what is going on INDEED and who is stying behind the PC on the other side of the wire - is this a real "web terrorist" or it is just an honest person who needs may be some more time between the hundreds of concerts and master class lectures all around the world in order to get the articles in the shape that you would like... So, how would you feel if you'd come into a court hall and the judge will welcome you with: "You are guilty" without even to listen to you? That my position. Please don't loose your human behavour and have a little understanding for the people - not everybody who doesn' understand your comple rules is a criminal! Liuben —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.131.66.232 (talk) 01:06, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
Liuben, we don't mind you creating pages. We mind copyright violations, and you've stubbornly refused even to read the policy pages when we pointed them out to you. And as of "not trying to reach anything through 'aggressive means'" how about some of the language you sent to the unblock-en mailing list? I quote: "During this process we were permanently disturbed by few so cold "administrators", like Antandrus , Scjessey, Black Kite , Nick , TexasAndroid and Orangemike , who appear more like police officers having nothing more serious to do than searching for the smallest conflicts in order to live their passion for ordering and controlling other people..." Look, if you'd take the time to read our policies you might understand why you can't just copy and paste things from elsewhere on the internet, and why conflict of interest is a bad idea. If you insist on writing about yourselves or people you know, you must be able to demonstrate that everything you are adding is verifiable from a reliable source. That's about the twentieth time you've seen those links, and I think a lot of us would be elated if you'd pause for a moment and read them. Thank you, Antandrus (talk) 01:13, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Malina Dimitrova

This article is up for deletion. The discussion can be found at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Malina Dimitrova for those who wish to comment. Voceditenore (talk) 09:46, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

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