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New Categories - Operas by setting

A whole lot of categories are being created for operas by setting. See Category:Operas by setting. I have no strong feelings one way or another about whether there should be such categories, but I've already reverted two errors - Don Giovanni as set in Italy and listing the musical A Greek Slave as an "opera". Members might want to keep an eye on either Special:Contributions/Orthorhombic or on Special:RecentChangesLinked/Category:Operas, in case any more errors pop up. Voceditenore (talk) 14:58, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

  • Update: Now there's yet another category Category:Operas with a Mythological Setting which of course conflates genre with geography. Into this he/she has put Le Villi (set in the Black Forest), Rusalka (Dargomyzhsky) (set on the Dnieper River), Don Giovanni (set in Spain) and Lord knows how many by now. Luisa Miller has gone into Category:Operas set in Italy, Nabucco in er... Category: Operas set in Israel, even though half of it take place in Babylon. Ernani got thrown into France even though most of it takes place in Spain, and I Lombardi got thrown into Italy even though most of it takes place near Jerusalem. I can't keep up with this. I'm going to leave the editor a note invite them to discuss this here. Voceditenore (talk) 16:06, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
    • Sure I would be happy to give a few thoughts. Firstly, I'm happy to stop and sort any outstanding problems before continuing. The idea came from a discussion between a screenwriter friend and I about finding a source for allusions from librettos for a film script that he is writing. I suggested that if Wikipedia had categories based on settings this would be of use in his case. I can think of many other uses as well (not that Wikipedia need be so utilitarian.) I will review existing contributions. (My apologies about Ernani: having sung in it, I should have been more careful.) Orthorhombic (talk) 16:24, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
    • We certainly would need a subcategory for settings that are non-topological if you like. Any thoughts on a title? Orthorhombic (talk) 16:26, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
This is just excess categorisation. I really don't see the point. Plus, this being Wikipedia, you are going to run into political arguments over certain designations, e.g. Israel or the British Isles. --Folantin (talk) 16:39, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
  • In theory, it can be useful to categorize by setting. But you have to make sure that they aren't misleading, e.g. lots of operas are set in more than one geographical location depending on the act. Also, some operas have different versions with different settings, e.g. Un ballo in maschera which has one version set in Sweden, and another set in America. Secondly, it's not only operas involving some mythological or folk-tale component to their story that have an unspecified setting. I suppose you could have Category:Operas set in unspecified locations. But that creates another problem. Not all opera articles on WP have detailed synopses. They may actually have a specified setting in the libretto or in performance practice, but it simply hasn't been added to the article yet. You shouldn't categorize based on guesswork in those instances, e.g. categorizing Luisa Miller as being set in Italy or assume that the libretto or performance practice specifies no setting. You need to research it first, and then add the setting to the article. Voceditenore (talk) 16:43, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
  • PS Folantin's right about the potential for ethnic battles, lame though they may be. Go here and scroll down to Hummus and friends ;-) Best, Voceditenore (talk) 17:14, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

By all means, let's include any categories that are useful, though I suspect this one wouldn't be quite so useful as, say, Category:Historical operas, Category:Operas based on Greek mythology (Also Slavonic, etc), Category:Verisimo operas, etc. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 11:00, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

New opera discographies

An editor has created a spate of separate opera discographies in the last few days, e.g. La traviata discography, Aida discography, etc. In general, I welcome this, as the huge clunky discography tables tended to overwhelm the articles and have rather inconsistent formats. The main issue here is what to do with the Recordings sections that are currently in the opera articles themselves. Kleinzach was able to merge the two versions for Tristan und Isolde and Rigoletto and then replace the Recordings section in the opera articles with: See Tristan und Isolde discography, etc. The rest are more problematic.

In all cases there is considerable but not complete overlap of coverage. In many cases, the articles actually have longer and more complete listings than the new discography pages. Plus many of the opera articles also list DVD versions, but the discography articles don't, at least not yet. Where they do overlap the two discographies don't always "agree". For example the date for the same recording of Lucia di Lammermoor is listed as 1998 in the Lucia article and 1997 in Lucia di Lammermoor discography. Some of them also present special complications where there are different versions of the opera, e.g. Don Carlos/Don Carlo or Lucia di Lammermoor/Lucie de Lammermoor, none of which is currently adequately explained in the discography articles. In fact they didn't even have leads with a link back to the article on the opera until I added them. They are also currently unreferenced, but it's early days yet.

Discographies aren't really my cup of tea, so this is just a heads-up to editors who may be interested in this area. You'll find them all at Category:Opera discographies. (They're all newly created apart from Pelléas et Mélisande, Porgy and Bess, and The Flying Dutchman.) Voceditenore (talk) 15:57, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Regarding the catalog numbers listed in the discographies: It might be helpful to include a note to indicate what edition is referred to since most of these recordings have been released many times in many different formats. e.g. "The catalog number listed refers to the most recent CD release, or most recent LP release if no CD exists." Just a thought... Further it would be nice if a distinction could be made between what entity made the recording and what company is offering it currently (such as: "recorded: 1956/RCA; ... label: BMG; cat no: xxxxxx".) Markhh (talk) 03:25, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
Are these really necessary? What do people think about merging this info back to the main opera articles and eliminating all but the most important recordings? I worry that these kind of list pages tend to grow wild. Also, they are little more than retreaded Amazon, Arkiv, etc.... Eusebeus (talk) 12:05, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Important: Copy/paste and close paraphrasing

Can I please ask all members to watch out for instances of this both in your own editing and in that of other editors. This is becoming an increasing problem now that good sources like Grove are available online. For more on what constitutes improper close paraphrasing, its consequences, and how to detect it, please read Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing. Below are some guidelines which must be observed, if we are to avoid bringing the OP into disrepute or worse:

  1. Never paste text from a copyright source directly into an article, even temporarily. Always do this kind of drafting work outside the article space and preferably off-wiki or in a version saved in your user page history. Significant chunks of copyright material should not appear anywhere on Wikipedia, including user pages. Any small chunks on your user pages should be clearly marked with quotation marks and have the source attributed.
  2. Be aware that even if the source is credited, close paraphrasing in an article is usually a violation of copyright and plagiarism. At the bare minimum, it's intellectually dishonest.
  3. It can be difficult sometimes to view your work objectively concerning these issues. If your draft article (or a section of it) is largely derived from a single source, ask another editor's opinion before going live with it. This is particularly important if the problem has been pointed out to you on previous occasions. We're not in a race here. Better a stub, or no article at all, than one which violates copyright.
  4. If you find closely paraphrased or pasted verbatim text in an article, remove it immediately and note this in the edit summary. If you are unsure, or for some reason don't want to make the edit yourself, tag the article with {{close paraphrase}} or {{copypaste}} (whichever is relevant) so that other editors are alerted to it.

Other ways you can help are to check Category:Articles with close paraphrasing periodically and keep an eye on the daily new opera articles bot results. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 12:55, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I've become concerned about the possibility this is happening too. I don't have access to the online Grove so I don't know to what extent this is going on. When I create "barebones" articles on obscure operas now I mostly stick to the facts rather than taking loads of critical commentary from a single source. With the major articles we are revising, I try to find several sources and ascribe any personal critical opinion to the relevant musicologist in the footnotes (of course, there are many general opinions which don't require this, e.g. "Carmen is Bizet's most famous opera" is common knowledge). When revising the major opera articles, I also plan to create my own plot summaries wherever possible by going directly to the libretto. --Folantin (talk) 13:49, 6 March 2009 (UTC)
That's very good advice! Unfortunately, I don't have access to Grove online either. If there are any editors who do have access and would be willing to be contacted with queries about possible close para or copy vio, could you let us know? It would be a big help. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 14:08, 6 March 2009 (UTC)
I'd ask Moreschi, who does have access, but he's not around at the moment. I would like to know how big a problem this is. Maybe somebody with a Grove subscription could run a few spot checks on suspect areas. --Folantin (talk) 16:35, 6 March 2009 (UTC)
I have access to the online Grove, and also have the 1980 in hard copy: feel free to ask me any time to spot-check. (I'm most likely to be available during the evenings California time.) For what it's worth, I do a lot of writing from the Grove, but I try to digest the whole article (and any other sources available) and then write back in my own words, rather than rewriting line-by-line, as that method results in too close a paraphrase. I do copy and paste diacritic-rich names and titles in foreign languages -- they're too hard to type. Antandrus (talk) 16:54, 6 March 2009 (UTC)
Cheers. I'll get back to you on that some time in the near future. --Folantin (talk) 12:24, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Suggestion on how to use Grove

I'd like to make a suggestion here on how to use the Grove, if it is your only good source; this suggestion is in addition to Voceditenore's excellent advice above. I do this now that I've started to have a look at the paraphrasing issue -- and I'm starting to find some close paraphrasing problems.

Read the Grove article. Digest it. Internalize it. Make sure you understand the outline of the subject well enough to explain it verbally to another person without looking at the Grove. Then make an outline of facts only (no adjectives; no phrases; just the facts, in chronological order if it is a biography or chronology otherwise applies. Now attempt a draft of the topic, just using your outline, preferably after not having looked at the Grove article for a little while. This will force you to write it in your own words -- it's just too easy to be tempted to copy the pithy and perfect phrases that one frequently encounters in Grove articles.

If anyone remembers User:Orbicle, that was a nasty mess to clean up. Many of those were cases of obvious copy-paste but there was also some close paraphrase. All the best, Antandrus (talk) 16:57, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

H.M.S. Pinafore

Pinafore has just been promoted to GA-class, and we intend shortly to get a peer review and then go to FAC. We would be grateful for anyone's assistance in reviewing the article. The "Analysis" section in particular needs research and expansion. For example, we mention several themes in the LEAD section that should be discussed but are not discussed in the analysis section. Perhaps some of the standard opera references discuss the themes (both musical and textual) in Pinafore? Thanks for any and all assistance! Best regards, -- Ssilvers (talk) 16:46, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Infobox

More a comment than anything else, but considering the project currently encourages users to tag opera biography pages with a note saying not to add an infobox because existing infoboxes are counterproductive, why do you not design an appropriate infobox? Infoboxes are not hard to make. SchuminWeb (Talk) 12:24, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Please read the archives.--Folantin (talk) 12:28, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

May CotM, OotM

Let's get this sorted beforehand this time, since we seem to keep forgetting about it until the last minute.

May would be a good month for the first Purcell push (the start of the FA-for-350th-birtday one), so, if noone objects, let's presume Purcell fills one of the slots. What should we use for the other? Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 16:48, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Purcell is fine (I might throw in Matthew Locke's semi-opera Psyche as an article for creation too). I'd wait a bit on the other (I don't have a clue myself - I'll probably stick to HP). --Folantin (talk) 16:51, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
Would William Vincent Wallace be a possibility? I have a potential FP for The Desert Flower, which would help round out our portal. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 17:57, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

I've taken the liberty of setting Purcell up. I hope I wasn't too wordy. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 19:41, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

'Tis a bit wordy, but that can be worked on later.;-) The thing is, what you are proposing, it what we normally do in OoM not CoM. The OoM is for improving existing content and takes as its theme either a single composer's work(s), or works on a particular subject, e.g. Biblical operas. I'm going to move the Purcell stuff to the May OoM.
I'd suggest we use the May CoM (intended for for creating new articles) for:
(plus 1 or 2 other suggestions, perhaps from other British/Irish composers?)
Best, Voceditenore (talk) 06:59, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
Sorry, I always get those two mixed up - they are pretty new still. I've added two more Wallace works from the Opera corpus - how about some Michael Balfe? I'm not sure which of Balfe's works to choose, though. He was pretty prolific, and we're a bit light.
Another alternative might be to add in the missing Purcell works, such as The Tempest (Purcell opera), Timon of Athens (opera), and arguably a few others. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 08:10, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
No Purcell's in the CoM, please. The whole point is to give editors a bit of variety between the two XoMs. Apart from adding one or two Balfe's to the CoM, I'd leave it as it is. Voceditenore (talk) 12:50, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
If you're going to add those Purcells put them with the rest of his works and the bio. Be very careful, IIRC The Tempest (semi-opera) is no longer regarded as Purcell's work. John Weldon is now considered the likeliest author. His Wiki-bio says: "Music for The Tempest, until the mid 1960s believed to have been composed by Henry Purcell, was in all probability written by Weldon for the Drury Lane Theatre, in 1712." The music for Timon of Athens isn't long enough to have the title "opera" (Timon of Athens (Purcell) would do). --Folantin (talk) 12:58, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Le Cid

A while ago I mentioned I was getting a newspaper reporting on the premiere of Le Cid (opera). I have it now. Could anyone interested send me an e-mail through Wikipedia so that we can work all of this into the article? Suffice it to say, there's about 4 pages of text, a full-page illustration, two half-page illustrations, and a DOUBLE PAGE illustration.

I think the 5 Dæeccembre 1885 issue of L'Illustration was a good choice. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 17:58, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Portal:Opera

Can members please see the latest updates on the portal talk page. More specifically, I would like to ask User:Cirt, who set up the revised format for the portal, to help us set up a "new content" section. If anyone has any objections, comments, doubts, etc. please comment on the portal talk page. My personal view (and Shoemaker's Holiday's) is that Cirt's re-formatting has made a big improvement in the portal, not only in terms of the content, but also in terms of the ease of maintenance and expansion. There are still a few things to iron out, but I feel we've made some real progress on it. If no one comments, I will assume you are all happy for me to ask Cirt for further help. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 13:04, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Commons:Category:National Portrait Gallery, London

I think that we've just hit the mother lode of images. This very large donation - several thousand - includes, for instance, 4 high quality pictures of Handel, 1 of Purcell, and that was just me looking for things I've recently been concentrating on.

It's very England-centric, but if some of you were willing, going through this, finding the best opera-related images (I believe all of them are of sufficient quality that they'll make FP easily) and nominating them at WP:FPC would be wonderful for our project: every Featured picture runs on the main page with a short caption describing it, so if we get a lot of opera FPs, we get a lot of attention. =) Should also be beneficial to the Portal: Voceditenore was saying that he wished we had more colour stuff.

Anyway, back to scanning old French Newspapers. 4 pages down, 12 to go (not all are opera related) Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 18:25, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Correction... Voceditenore was saying that she wished we had more colour stuff.:-). Seriously, though... These are amazing! I've started looking through them and have found the following so far:
I'm off in a few days, with tons of stuff to do in the interim. So perhaps someone else can nominate them and/or add them to articles? Best, Voceditenore (talk) 17:41, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
Sorry, I presumed that your nickname referred to you having a tenor voice, which is presumably mistaken =) Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 05:25, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
I just like tenor voices but don't have one. Trust me, you don't want to hear me sing.;-) Voceditenore (talk) 10:18, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Le Cid (opera)

We really need to expand this article. Otherwise, by the time I finish the four high-quality images I have of its première, it's going to be really over-heavy with images. =/ On the upside, I can provide four pages of newspaper reviews describing the première. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 16:29, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Agrippina (opera)

As you may have noticed, we are live on the mainpage today. =) Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 07:43, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

The Bartered Bride

I am considering developing The Bartered Bride, possibly as a prelude to the full development of the Bedrich Smetana article. Significant work on the opera article is likely to start in early May, with a view to its being posted for peer review before I take a wikibreak in late May. If these plans cut across any ongoing projects, please let me know. Brianboulton (talk) 14:02, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

I'll try and help. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 16:09, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
The way the research is going, I'll probably do the Smetana article first after all. Brianboulton (talk) 20:31, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

The Rake's Progress

I've added a couple of Hogarth's paintings the opera was based on to illustrate - the plot deviates from the paintings - the old woman he marries for her money becomes a bearded lady he marries at Shaddow's urging, for instance - so I've just chosen the ones with the most cast-iron connection and left the rest out.

See what you think, and whether we should add more Hogarth (see A Rake's Progress for the other possible illustrations) Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 03:29, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I think those illustrations are unhelpful in an article about the opera. As expected, the opera article provides a link to the article about Hogarth's paintings, and that should suffice. On the other hand, pictures from the opera's performance would indeed illustrate the subject. Michael Bednarek (talk) 05:46, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
I'm not sure I agree: They were, after all, the direct inspiration for the piece, so we ought to include at least one. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 21:24, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Marco Lazzara

(Writing from a hotel in deepest, darkest, California). If any members wish to comment, Marco Lazzara is at AfD. Best, --Voceditenore (talk) 13:26, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

H.M.S. Pinafore

I think this article is about ready to be nominated at WP:FAC. I would appreciate any comments on the article (at the article's talk page), over the next week or so, before we nominate it. Thanks! -- Ssilvers (talk) 16:43, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

If you send it to peer review I'll give it a full review there. Brianboulton (talk) 20:33, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

The Peer Review page is here. Thanks! -- Ssilvers (talk) 23:33, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

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