Wikipedia:Peer review/The Triumph of St. Joan/archive1

The Triumph of St. Joan
This peer review discussion has been closed. I've listed this article for peer review because I would eventually like to submit this article for Good Article status. Any comments to help the article towards this goal would be appriciated.

Thanks, Singingdaisies (talk) 23:39, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Finetooth comments: This is interesting and nicely illustrated. I think that adding a bit of the historical background, perhaps as part of a Plot or Synopsis section, might make this more accessible to readers unfamiliar with Joan of Arc, and I have a few other suggestions.


 * Would it be helpful to briefly explain who Joan of Arc was and what her trial was about? This might be done by inserting a Synopsis section that not only recounts the plot but connects it to the historical background.


 * Would it be useful to list the musical numbers or individual arias, if they have names? Would it be possible to quote a line or two to give us something of the flavor of the language?


 * I noticed and fixed a dozen or so misspellings, and the article could be improved further by careful proofreading and a bit of copyediting.


 * I'd suggest looking for sentences that could be tightened. Here's an example: "The composer had been contemplating writing an opera for a number of years already but had not found a subject matter that inspired him until attending the 1948 film Joan of Arc with his friend Joseph Machilis, a writer, musician, and Queens College, City University of New York, faculty member. The two men both agreed that an opera focusing on the "inner motivations and spiritual life of Joan" could be derived effective ly and moving ly and that it would make a good project for SLC. Over the next 11 months the[y] two men laboured together to create the opera's libretto and Dello Joio composed the music in this time as well.

1959 opera
 * Wikilink aria?
 * "renowned dancer Martha Graham performed the role of Joan of Arc using her own choreography." - Wikilink choreography?
 * "a theme and variation in 6/8 with flute and oboe soloists on the melody" - Change to 6/8 time, linked? Ditto for 12/8 and 4/4? Readers may not know what these numbers or other special terms refer to.


 * Images should include alt text for readers who can't see the images. Alt text differs from captioning. WP:ALT explains how to write alt text and where to put it, and you can see recent examples of alt text in the articles at WP:FAC.

References
 * Wikipedia uses title case in the citations even when the sources use all caps. Thus, "COMPOSER OF NEW OPERA DISCUSSES HIS WORK; RECITAL FOR TWO" should be re-cast as "Composer of New Opera Discusses His Work; Recital for Two".
 * The citations are all incomplete in one or more ways. Citations to Internet sources should include author, title, publisher, date of publication, url, and access date, if all of these can be found. The access date is the date you gathered the information and saw that the url was alive. If it's still alive, you can use the current date.
 * The author's last name generally comes first; e.g., Harman, Carter.

I hope these few suggestions prove helpful. If so, please consider reviewing another article, especially one from the PR backlog. That is where I found this one. Finetooth (talk) 03:46, 16 October 2009 (UTC)