Talk:Paris Opera/Archive 1

Very old theater, body discovered inside a wall
What theater was this? It was in either London or Paris. The theater still stands, as far as I know, but I forget which it is. It is over 300 years old. Apparently during renovations in the mid-1800s a body was discovered inside a wall. This sound familiar to anybody? --208.65.188.23 (talk) 06:47, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Rename

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

No consensus to move. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:36, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Paris Opera → Paris Opéra – The accented form is used in all five of the sources cited by the article. Robert.Allen (talk) 23:50, 12 May 2011 (UTC)


 * My previously added comments follow here:

The proposed rename of this article probably needs to be discussed. Many English sources use the name Paris Opera, although Paris Opéra is also quite commonly used. It has not been established which is more common. See also Naming conventions (use English).--Robert.Allen (talk) 07:14, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Here are some English books which use Paris Opera: --Robert.Allen (talk) 07:31, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Lully's Armide at the Paris Opera: a performance history, 1686-1766, Part 2
 * The Magic of the Paris Opera: 300 years of French style
 * Backstage at the revolution : how the Royal Paris Opera survived the end of the old regime
 * First sentence inside the dust jacket: "On July 14, 1789, a crowd of angry French citizens en route to Bastille broke into the Paris Opera..."
 * Rosa Morandi: the swan of the Paris Opera, a biography
 * Music Criticism of the Paris Opera in the 1830s

It seems when "Opéra" is used alone, the accented name is preferred; when used with Paris, either "Paris Opera" or "Paris Opéra" is used. It may be a question of when both are acceptable, which is preferred on the Wikipedia: the anglicized version or not? --Robert.Allen (talk) 08:00, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Spire Pitou's book uses "Paris Opéra".
 * The Oxford Dictionary of Opera uses "Opéra (Paris)" for the title of its article on the company, so this is another alternative.
 * Marc Chagall on art and culture: including the first book on Chagall's art
 * From the text: "Two years ago, André Malraux asked me to paint a new ceiling for the Paris Opera."

Jacques Barzun uses "Paris Opera", and even "the Opera" (instead of "Opéra"), in his book Berlioz and the Romantic Century (1969, ISBN 9780231031356). Nowhere does he used the accented French version of the name. When Marc Chagall and French-born Jacques Barzun both use "Paris Opera" when writing in English, it should at least give us pause before renaming this article to "Paris Opéra". --Robert.Allen (talk) 23:01, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

I noticed that the naming guidelines suggest that the sources cited in the article can be used as a guide in naming the article. On this basis, since all five of the currently cited sources use the accented "Opéra", this might be the preferred name. Fauser and Everist index the company under "Paris Opéra", but The Cambridge Companion to Grand Opera indexes the company under "Opéra (Paris)" and Pitou under "Opéra". Neither of the last two are very appealing. (In this conversation with myself, I have convinced myself that the proposed rename is OK. :-). --Robert.Allen (talk) 23:39, 12 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Query: is the word pronounced like the English word "opera" or is it pronounced with the accent on the second syllable? Powers T 12:40, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Neither; the stress of Opéra is on the last syllable: . -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 14:07, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Then I Oppose the move; "Paris Opera" is clearly English and using the accent misleads as to pronunciation. One wouldn't say "PAIR-iss o-per-A"; one would either say "PAIR-iss OP-er-a" or "o-per-A na-shon-AL de pa-REE".  (Please forgive my non-IPA pronunciation guides.)  Powers T 19:50, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

I should probably mention, since it is not very clear from the above, that this proposal for renaming the article originated with User:Kleinzach who made this edit, which would have enabled the move to be made without discussion. I felt the move should be discussed and therefore moved the proposal to this talk page where I feel it belongs. I am ambivalent at best about this proposal. Personally I prefer the English version of the title, but I can see the justification for the "Franglais" version (which I added to the "Requested move" template). --Robert.Allen (talk) 10:03, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

One problem with renaming the article to Paris Opéra is that in order to include the alternate names, we may end up with a rather odd lead sentence. For instance, one could imagine a lead sentence like the following: I tried modifying the current lead so that it may address Kleinzach's concern regarding consistency in the names in the article. I'm wondering whether this helps solve the problem? --Robert.Allen (talk) 17:09, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
 * The Paris Opéra (English: Paris Opera; French: Opéra de Paris, or simply the Opéra) is...
 * Oppose. Opéra is not English - WP:USEENGLISH. -- P 1 9 9 • TALK 15:28, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose. On further consideration the argument in favor of the name change based on usage in the cited sources is overstated. Neither The New Grove Dictionary of Opera nor the The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (at least the edition that I have) uses the combination "Paris Opéra", but rather simply "Opéra". Although Pitou uses the combination in his title, he indexes the company name under "Opéra" suggesting that in the title he is using "Paris" as an English place modifier of the French title of the company. The Cambridge Companion to Grand Opera indexes the company under "Opéra (Paris)". Selecting a French name for the company is often problematic and highly context dependent, depending on the place or the era being discussed, as the table in the article makes abundantly clear. The simple English name "Paris Opera", which is used in numerous sources, would appear to be a correct and appropriate alternative in almost any context and is therefore probably the best choice for the English Wikipedia. The article needs expansion, and many of the books which use the English form of the name should eventually be added to the source list in any case. --Robert.Allen (talk) 17:19, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Rename (Paris Opera or Paris Opéra?)
This discussion was started as a result of the dab move I requested, and yet I knew nothing about it. Now I see it has been closed after only a week, rather than the more usual 14 days! Objection!

I made the dab request on the basis on editorial consistency with the article text, however there's another issue which seems to have been overlooked. Does 'Paris Opera' and 'Paris Opéra' mean the same thing? IMO the latter is more specific and fits the article better. We generally include accents in foreign names, rather than leaving them out, unless the name has clearly been translated. As the article itself richly illustrates, this is not the case here. (So, for example, it's not equivalent to Vienna State Opera.) 'The Opera' is not the same thing as 'the Opéra'!

Given the fast work above, I doubt I can get this reversed — hence this is for the record. I'm sure this will come up again! -- Klein zach  05:02, 20 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Hi Kleinzach, Sorry you were unaware of this discussion. I was remiss in not notifying you directly, but I guess I assumed you had a watch set on this page and the redirect page. I'll try to do better in the future. Template:Requested move clearly states that the discussion is to last for 7 days, but you can certainly create a new move request at any time. Examples of authors who have used the English form of the name include Jacques Barzun, Marc Chagall, Victoria Johnson, Lois Rossow, Rita Stark, and Laurie Shulman, all of whom were cited in the above discussion. --Robert.Allen (talk) 06:30, 21 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Usages by individual writers are necessarily different from that of an encyclopedic article. Each will be right in his or her own terms, because the context will be slightly different, referring to the institution or the company, or the history, or the tradition etc. We should only be concerned with this particular encyclopedic article. -- Klein zach  23:56, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

By the way, here is a better link for what the template says: ]

But in any case, I don't see why we can't continue to discuss this issue here without immediately making another formal move request. I confess I have vacillated on this question, and maybe I haven't done a very good job of explaining how my thinking has evolved. It seems to me that one of your concerns is possible confusion between "Paris opera" and the institution of the Opéra. A better formulation of the former in most circumstances would probably be "opera in Paris", although for most readers just putting the word "opera" in lower case is likely sufficient. Jacques Barzun, one of the most esteemed French-born authors writing in English, when discussing Paris in his book Berlioz and the Romantic Century chooses to refer to the institution simply as "the Opera". The capital letter makes the difference.

But one has to also admit that most musicologists use the term "Opéra". The New Grove Dictionary of Opera and The New Grove Dictionary of Music & Musicians are good examples. But as far as I have been able to determine, those two books mainly use it alone as "Opéra" within a context of discussing Paris and rarely use the construct "Paris Opéra". Why is this? When one writes "Paris Opéra", it can possibly be correct when one is intending "Paris" as an English place modifier and "Opéra" as the French title of the institution, but to use "Paris Opéra" for the title of this article is to force both words into the title of the institution: the result is not English or French. Consider possible names of some other French opera companies: Opéra de Marseille (Marseille Opera) or Opéra de Monte Carlo (Monte Carlo Opera) – the accent is always dropped in the English version. With this type of title, the two correct options for the article title would be "Opéra de Paris" or "Paris Opera". Of the two, I feel the second is preferable for the English Wikipedia.

Another option would be to use the contemporary name "Opéra National de Paris". (I use the capital "N" because this is what New Grove uses.) The problem I have with this version of the name is that it cannot properly be used to refer to the company at any earlier time in history, whereas "Paris Opera" (or "Opéra de Paris") is completely general and can be used regardless of what era one is is discussing. --Robert.Allen (talk) 22:09, 21 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of time for this now, but I would like to make two points: (1) it's odd to argue for 'Paris Opera' as a title and then use the accent throughout the article. If the accent gives greater clarity in the article, then the same thing goes for the title. (2) The argument for 'Paris Opera' specificity depends on the capitalization of 'Opera", however ordinary readers (unaware of the title capitalization style of Wikipedia), will read 'Paris Opera' as equivalent to 'London Opera' or 'Berlin Opera' (i.e. meaning 'Opera in London' etc.).


 * Would you also want to re-title 'Vienna State Opera' as 'Vienna Opera'? I don't think so — 'Vienna Opera' is not as clear as 'Vienna State Opera' — though doubtless you will find that dozens of writers have referred to the 'Vienna Opera'. -- Klein  zach  23:56, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Regarding your point 1: I agree, but perhaps we should first settle on the title of the article, and then we can worry about making the text more consistent. Regarding point 2, according to WP:Naming conventions (use English): "The title of an article should generally use the version of the name of the subject which is most common in the English language, as you would find it in reliable sources (for example other encyclopedias and reference works)." So maybe we should base our decision on some empirical evidence, rather than my ad hoc arguments about what is English vs. French (which I admit I have no sources to support other than my intuition or memory, which I'm sure are not a reliable sources), or our discussion about what Wikipedia readers will or will not understand from capitalization. And instead of using the authors I cited above, none of whose books constitute what I would label encyclopedias and reference works per se, perhaps we should consult some actual commonly used "encyclopedias and reference works". I've checked a few I have on hand. Unfortunately, the two New Grove dictionaries as mentioned above are not really helpful for selecting the combination "Paris Opéra". However, you may be pleased to learn, that 3 of 4 other reference works I checked provide quite a bit of support for it. They are as follows: In any case, this is a limited sample. Is it enough to provide support for renaming the article to Paris Opéra? Perhaps, but maybe you, or other Wikipedians who might happen to read this, have other reference books at hand that we could consult to add to this list. For instance, does anybody have the recommended encyclopedias: the Columbia Encyclopedia or Encarta? --Robert.Allen (talk) 04:24, 24 May 2011 (UTC)
 * The New Encyclopedia Britannica (1991, 15th edition, vol. 9, p. 154): the article about the company is titled "Paris Opéra".
 * Dodd Mead's The International Cyclopedia of Music and Musicians (1975, 10th edition, p. 5): the article about the company is titled "ACADÉMIE DE MUSIQUE, of Paris (Paris Opéra)".
 * The Oxford Dictionary of Opera (1992 edition, p. 519): the article about the company is titled "Opéra (Paris)". [It is not at all clear that this one supports the proposal.]
 * The Oxford Illustrated History of Opera (1994 edition, p. 530): the index entry for the company is "Paris Opéra".


 * I disagree almost entirely with that approach, which IMO makes something quite simple into something unnecessarily complicated. The various encyclopedias each have a different approach. (For example, New Grove Opera has articles on 'cities', grouping theatres and periods together in histories. Wikipedia has a different organization breaking down a Grove 'opera city' article into multiple separate titles.) So they adopt necessarily different titles. In this case we should follow Wikipedia style, not misapply a convention (WP:Naming conventions (use English)) that was not designed to address ambiguity.


 * It's also wrong to suggest we can fit the text of an article to its title. That's a laborious, ultimately stultifying, way of editing. The title should accurately describe the text it heads. -- Klein zach  05:01, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, regarding the title I thought we were supposed to try to follow Wikipedia guidelines. I was just trying to find more appropriate sources which support your proposed title. Of the sources previously cited in this discussion only Fauser and Everist really supported it. (I am surprised to see that you object to this.) Regarding the question of confusion with the genre, I noticed that the redirect page Opéra points to a table which lists opéra as a genre, so wouldn't Paris Opéra be just as confusing as Paris Opera in this regard? Also, the current lead now mentions the Opéra as an alternative name, so at least the article is not as inconsistent as it was before. --Robert.Allen (talk) 17:51, 24 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Basta! This has turned into a time sink, rather than a cogent debate. I'm unwilling to continue it. -- Klein  zach  06:08, 25 May 2011 (UTC)