Talk:La belle Hélène

The cast
Something will have to be done about the table. If the cast of the premiere is to remain in it, the historical hierarchical order (ranks and gender) has to be observed. We may think it's ridiculous (I certainly do), but that cannot be a reason to paint the wrong picture. Another solution would be to treat the two lists separately. Suggestions and comments welcome! MOI JE CROIS 13:25, 25 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Interesting point. Can you explain in further detail? By the way we still have lots of major singers in red. Do you have information on them? I'd be happy to help with English copy-editing. -- Kleinzach 01:30, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Copy edits will always be appreciated. Thank you! - The table now reflects the livret de censure. I think that's a good rule to follow, easy to keep in mind and easy to verify for everyone. - Following the same rule, I changed my Oyayaie back to Oyayaye and your opéra bouffe to the original anthropophagie. Any other rule that can easily be explained will also do, of course. - The singers, or at least some of them, I will tackle as soon as I'm through with the main operettas. MOI JE CROIS 18:31, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

700 runs
The only "hard" number I could find. Lots of sources have it, but are they independent of each other? The easiest one for you to check is the Dictionnaire chronologique..., p.275, 2nd col., para 2, l.1 ff: L'opérette interprétée par l'inégalable Hortense Schneider eut un succès extraordinaire et fut donnée sept cents soirs de suite. Might turn out to be inaccurate, as most of the information that we have on Offenbach, e.g. the names. I certainly wouldn't be surprised MOI JE CROIS 18:31, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

fresh productions?
I know nothing about the conventions of operatic articles, but I have to ask, what is the usual way of covering productions other than the original one. Is the original production the only one that bears coverage? -- Cimon Avaro; on a pogostick. (talk) 05:09, 2 January 2009 (UTC)


 * The WikiProject Opera, of which I am a member, has a basic outline format for opera articles. I've been doing a lot of work on ewarly Veri operas, so take a look at something such as I due Foscari for an example.  "Performance history" covers performances later than the original or local follow ups and, depending upon the opera's popularity, coverage can't or shouldn't include every production ever done anywhere.  Links to reviews or coverage are useful to support the value of any individual production. Viva-Verdi (talk) 17:19, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Between Orphée and Hélène
There is a statement: "During the subsequent six years the composer attempted, generally in vain, to emulate this success," which gives a demonstrably incorrect view of Offenbach's creative and production life during the period between these two works. I do not have access to the cited authority, but at hand I have many sources which recount in detail many instances of significant success and a certain number of not-so-successful; a typical very active career. I might quote from the article on Offenbach (Early 1860's): "The 1860s were Offenbach's most successful decade;" "Apart from that setback [Barkouf], Offenbach flourished in the 1860s, with successes greatly outnumbering failures." FrankMJohnson (talk) 22:00, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Without checking Faris I think this means that after Orphée his next massive success was this, although there were clearly big successes in between which didn't quite equal the first ancient history spoof. That's how I read it but maybe it's not clear or needs tweaking. Cg2p0B0u8m (talk) 20:04, 8 July 2023 (UTC)