Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Opera/Archive 12

Archives Table of Contents

Britten image
I've done a Template:Britten operas which is almost ready to go, except that the Benjamin Britten article has no image in it for me to use, and Mozart doesn't really seem right for the job, somehow. It seems that there was once an image in the article (Image:Benjamin Britten.jpg) but it was removed because the copyright status was uncertain. I suppose I could use the Hambling scallop-shell, but that would look a little weird. There's a (presumably) usable image in the Esperanto Wikipedia but if get it from there to here I don't know what to say about it when I get it. Could someone with more expertise in these matters than I have advise (or, better, provide a suitable image which is OK on the copyright front). --GuillaumeTell 15:42, 15 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Working on it. I've found one image that I think might be OK copyright-wise, but I need a bit more time to check whether it actually is. Cheers, Moreschi Request a recording? 10:37, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Grand Opera for GA? FA?
Is it time now to apply for GA or FA for Buondelmonte's Grand Opera? If so, how should we go about it? - Kleinzach 05:34, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Help on Homophony
I know that the subject of this article isn't quite under the scope of the WikiProject, but it was a pretty important development in opera, so I was wondering if anyone could lend a helping hand to the article, especially in terms of the history of homophony. Being opera enthusiasts, someone must be able to help. -- Cielomobile talk / contribs 02:36, 22 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Checking it out. Moreschi Request a recording? 16:26, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Wikisource for aria text pages?
Someone is recommending that Dies Bildnis ist bezaubernd schön be copied into WikiSource. We've never really liked articles on individual arias. Maybe this is a good solution? What do other people think about this? - Kleinzach 03:57, 22 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I think this is a fine way of getting rid of operatic fancrufty articles on the latest lovely aria people heard that evening. These articles are rarely of encyclopedic value and are rarely encyclopedic: just, well, often the text of the aria and the details of it's position in the opera. That's operacruft: no assertion of importance outside of the opera! Wikisource is probably the best place for most of these articles. Moreschi Request a recording? 16:42, 22 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Good idea. It looks as if most, if not all, of articles in Category:Arias have been similarly tagged, but not the vocal numbers in Category:Opera excerpts. --GuillaumeTell 18:40, 22 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Right. I've gone ahead and put tags on some of those in Category:Opera excerpts. - Kleinzach 23:23, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Tribute to Viva-Verdi
Just a note to record my appreciation of the major contribution that Viva Verdi made to our articles - many of those on opera houses, companies and festivals were written by him. Due to his efforts these are among the strongest areas of our coverage. He made over 4000 edits and was probably one of our top five or six editors.

I still don't know why he left WP/Opera Project. The problems with citations on the List of important operas were perhaps just technical? He was also having problems with a vandal who repeatedly blanked his pages, prompting him to change his user name (with a hyphen). Whatever happened I regret he is no longer a member of our group. - Kleinzach 09:45, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Parsifal accepted as GA
Parsifal has been accepted as a 'good article'. Kleinzach 00:17, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Another opera GA! Excellent! Congrats to the people who wrote and developed that if they read this. Moreschi Request a recording? 13:38, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I wonder if there are any other pages that are already complete enough to nominate? (I realize that Grand opera, mentioned above, doesn't qualify because there are no pictures included.) - Kleinzach 01:11, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Grand opera could do with a few more inline citations, as well as some pics. Moreschi Request a recording? 16:00, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
 * You obviously understand inline citations better than most of us, so please don't hesitate to tell us when, where and how to do them! -Kleinzach 23:49, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

User:AlexNewArtBot - New Article Bot
Hi, I am in the trial runs of the User:AlexNewArtBot (see Bots/Requests_for_approval/AlexNewArtBot). The bot reads all the new articles for a day and puts suspected Opera-related articles into User:AlexNewArtBot/OperaSearchResult, the articles are suppose to be manually put into the portal page and/or removed if irrelevant. Or whatever you want to do with them.

The list of rules are in User:AlexNewArtBot/Opera, there is also the log on the User:AlexNewArtBot/OperaLog explaining the rules that sent an article to the search results (the log is cleared every day, so try to look into the history of the log). Please contact me if you are interested in the fine tuning of the rules

That is all. Any suggestions are welcome. Alex Bakharev 08:06, 27 March 2007 (UTC)


 * This looks potentially useful, but it certainly needs some fine tuning. At present there's masses of noise, mostly caused by the inclusion of articles which contain the words "soap opera"!  I'll contact Alex and see what he can do about that:  possibly a much more manageable list will result from just the one change. --GuillaumeTell 10:48, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, I appreciate the effort but I've had bad experience of such bots. There was a bot for Project:France which went round adding any page containing place names in French, so we ended up with loads of Canadian, Moroccan etc. articles included. This kind of thing can spark off Wiki-dramas. So it would depend entirely on how intelligent this program is. --Folantin 11:06, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Maybe only ten or twenty percent of the items are relevant to us. Interestingly these were all uncategorized which shows the potential value of such a list. - Kleinzach 14:01, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I seem to remember encountering the destruction caused by the France bot somewhere - but this one is different in that it doesn't tag the articles, it just provides a daily listing. Alex has already taken the soap opera problem on board - see his Talk page - so let's have a look at tomorrow's listing and see if we need to refine the criteria further. --GuillaumeTell 00:29, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

I've moved the results from our main project page (where Alex put them) to a subpage WikiProject Opera/New article bot. Hope that is OK with everyone. (I also left him a note about tightening up the inclusion criteria.) - Kleinzach 08:55, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Composer of the month for May
Perhaps we can look ahead to May? From the point of view of coverage Rossini is probably the most important composer needing attention, however we have already done a lot of early 19th century Italian opera. Other possibilities might be Marc-Antoine Charpentier, or Grétry (perhaps combined with Daniel Auber)? Maybe there are other candidates? - Kleinzach 23:44, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Grétry plus Auber might be a bit too much because IIRC we'd have 70+ operas to do. How about their main works plus some of the other major (lighter) opéras comiques we have yet to cover, e.g. Philidor's Tom Jones, Monsigny's Le Déserteur, works by Boieldieu and Hérold and so on? --Folantin 08:05, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, Offenbach wrote 97, but we are only covering 18 of them (so far), likewise The opera corpus has 10 works for Grétry (all red links) and Auber has seven (four red and three blue). But I take your point about the other opéras comique composers. What should we call the collection, so that it is clear and will (hopefully!) serve to attract other contributors? And what do the others think? - Kleinzach 11:04, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
 * How about "Important French opéras comiques 1750-1850", for instance? If the Offenbach wasn't absolutely comprehensive then maybe I needn't have worried about having Grétry and Auber as composers of the month, but it would be nice to throw in a few of the major o.c.s by other composers as well. --Folantin 11:14, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Sounds an interesting project, but maybe the title would need to have the word 'composers' included. . . . What do the others think of this idea? For or against? - Kleinzach 12:31, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm not against, but there are rather a lot of opéras comiques. The Category:Opéra comiques (sic) contains works by Adam, Auber, Bizet, Chabrier, Cherubini, Donizetti, Gluck, Massé, Massenet and Offenbach, and, as well as Grétry, other composers in the genre who aren't represented there include Boieldieu, Méhul, Philidor ....  As to Kleinzach's point, could we retitle May's CotM as Genre of the Month, perhaps? --GuillaumeTell 16:45, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
 * On consideration, maybe it's just simpler if we have Grétry and Auber as composers of the month. --Folantin 17:00, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I second Grétry and Auber (and I am happy to help with odd Philidor, Monsigny', Boieldieu and Hérold informally as necessary). - Kleinzach 22:13, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I'll make it my task for April to sort out some of those stray opéras comiques. --Folantin 08:40, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
 * No problem with Grétry and Auber. Moreschi Request a recording? 09:47, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Excellent. That's decided then. I will add them above. - Kleinzach 10:57, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

French plurals
Referring to "Opéra comiques (sic)" (above), GuillaumeTell kindly reminds us/me that we/I have a problrem with compound French plurals. (This only really applies in relation to genre categories which are supposed to be plural.)

Am I right in thinking that:


 * Category:Opéra bouffes should be Opéras bouffes
 * Category:Opéra comiques should be Opéras comiques
 * Category:Opéra féeries should be Opéras féeries

Thanks for your expert guidance on this! - Kleinzach 08:24, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I believe that is correct. On the other hand, words with two elements linked by a hyphen (e.g. opéra-ballet) only take an "s" at the end. There's also the whole vexed question of French capitalisation, which seems to be a great deal more complex (ridiculously so) than I believed. See here for an attempted explanation: . Rather than get lost in that labyrinth, maybe we should stick with the capitalised titles we have now. --Folantin 08:36, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
 * We can make the category name changes if we are absolutely sure about this. It's a bit of a rigmarole but we need to get it right.


 * On French capitalization, I hope we can stick with the Grove system. I realize this is a minefield and whatever we do some people will disagree with us, but IMO we should try to be consistent even if the French (unlike ourselves, the Germans etc.) are not! (P.S. I've seen that french.about.com web page before!). - Kleinzach 09:42, 31 March 2007 (UTC)


 * The Oxford Dictionary of Opera actually has Opéra-comique and Opéra-bouffe .... --GuillaumeTell 10:01, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
 * As far as I can tell, Opéra-Comique is the name of the theatre and opéra comique is the name of the genre. That's how "Oxford Illustrated History" and "Viking" use the terms. --Folantin 10:13, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Grove agrees with the "Oxford Illustrated History"/ "Viking" on the genres opéra comique, opéra bouffe, and opéra féerie (no hyphens). the only exception is opéra-ballet. - Kleinzach 10:52, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

I have put the three categories (above) up for speedy renaming. - Kleinzach 23:59, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Wikimedia Commons
One of the good things about editing opera articles is that images uploads are easy, mostly because copyright isn't a great problem: anything pre-1920s is public domain, and hence fair game, and all two-dimensional reproductions of public domain art are themselves public domain. The practical upshot of which is that it's quite easy to lift operatic images of a certain age off the web and upload them to Commons: the point of uploading them to Commons rather than here is that once at Commons they can be easily used not only here, but across all Wikimedia projects. So, I thought that a few people might like to create accounts at Commons, as well as here, for image uploads. Cheers, Moreschi Request a recording? 10:49, 31 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Very good idea. The problem is that I (personally) have difficulty switching from text-mode to image-mode. Do other people have the same problem? i wonder if we might adopt a team (i.e. division of labour) approach to compiling articles? Maybe someone would like to specialize in picture research? (Perhaps we could add a picture research team to the main page?) - Kleinzach 01:29, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

This month's composer: Jacques Offenbach
I have already done some initial work on the individual opera title articles.

Maybe it's worth explaining what I have and haven't covered. I've started articles where necessary, extracting all the basic information from the Grove articles by Andrew Lamb. (There wasn't a lot there). I've also made 'wikitables' of the roles, including when possible the role creators, usually with information from the French pages. What we need now are synopses, recordings info and illustrations.

Incidentally, the Second Empire social/historical background to Offenbach is fascinating. Unfortunately we have few articles on singers of the period and also the theatres. These exist in the French pages. I wonder if we can interest some French translators in our project? - Kleinzach 01:34, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I could give it a go. The problem with many of the articles in foreign Wikipedias is that they are rarely sourced properly. --Folantin 08:52, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
 * We can be selective in the information we use - and also use Grove/Viking etc. to doublecheck basic facts. (I am always amazed at how new articles grow once you start them off.) - Kleinzach 09:35, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Here are the main entries I had in mind: theatres: Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens, Théâtre des Variétés, Théâtre de la Gaîté, and singers: Zulma Bouffar, José Dupuis, Juliette Simon-Girard. - Kleinzach 01:15, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I added as much info to Les brigands as I could find, including musical numbers, some brief plot info and information about the English-language versions; but a lot of the google hits about the work are in French, so someone who speaks french needs to take a look too. I also noted and linked to casting information for the English language versions, but I'm pretty helpless with tables, so feel free to stick the information into your table. Best regards, -- Ssilvers 16:48, 5 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Thank you but it's important to check and edit the text befotre it goes public. At the moment the synopsis and the roles list don't match and the list of musical numbers is wierdly capitalized (e.g. "Ce Petit Est Un Vrai Luron"). Can we use established, authoritative sources to avoid these problems? It would be helpful not to approach the operettas through adaptations and derivative sources. Cheers. - Kleinzach 01:18, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject Operetta
This project is inactive. It only ever had one member. Nevertheless it exists in the WP structure as an entity alongside and equal to opera. I wonder if we should merge it into the Opera Project ? If so, how exactly do we merge one project into another? - Kleinzach 23:53, 1 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Incidentally, I have also put Category:Operetta librettists up for deletion. Operetta performers was deleted some time ago. - Kleinzach 06:16, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
 * If no one objects I'll merge this myself. You just leave a redirect in place and cut-and-paste the relevant content on that page over to here. Perhaps we should create a subpage of the Project page for operetta? Cheers, Moreschi Request a recording? 17:07, 5 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Merge/redirect would be good, thanks. IMO we don't have enough material for a sub-page. Perhaps we just need to note the remaining populated operetta categories (Category: Operetta composers and Category: Operettas) on our project page? I have already depopulated the (relatively few) operetta-stubs. - Kleinzach 13:48, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * P.S. The two cats (above) are now listed on our project page. Kleinzach 01:27, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

I have now put Category:Operetta stubs up for merging with Category:Opera stubs. Category:Operetta librettists has now been merged (or is being merged) with Category:Opera librettists. - Kleinzach 00:19, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Template talk:Mozart Operas
Someone has pointed out that Template:Mozart Operas uses a mix of English and original languages. Should it be made to look more consistent? Feel free to comment via the above link. --GuillaumeTell 17:48, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

List of participants
I have divided the list of participants into active and former sections. This is primarily to make the project page more accessible and consolidate space. I hope that is OK. Having 'active' and former sections is common on other projects. If i have wrongly assigned anyone to inactivity, please just move your name across! I have tried to include everyone who has been active in the last three months or so. Best Kleinzach 05:49, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I think it might be polite to put a note on the Talk pages of participants deemed "former" in case they haven't got this page on their watchlists. For example, Wetman edited an opera article today, and others (e.g. Fireplace) are still around but mostly doing other things - which doesn't preclude working on opera from time to time.  Oh, and perhaps the active/former lists should be in alpha rather than random order. --GuillaumeTell 00:36, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I doubt I will have time myself to write to each person individually - there are too many names! (Of course if someone is willing to take this on that will be ideal!) In any case being active in the project is really defined by being here - which means automatically seeing changes to the pages. Obviously we will be delighted if people reaffirm their interest in the project by putting their names in the active section. The order is chronological - the oldest members come first - as with the old list. - Kleinzach 01:40, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Perhaps I should add that I did check user contributions before I divided the list. Also it's worth noting that only about half of our contributors actually join the project. - Kleinzach 04:36, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Another point: I am wondering whether we should add annotations in order to make it easier for new participants, for example Mazeppa (since Oct. 2006, Russian, Czech opera, 34 new articles). What do you think? - Kleinzach 01:40, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Although I am one has "been around but mostly doing other things" :) I would still like to be considered active for now. As Kleinzach suggested above, I simply moved my name to the active section.


 * Before the Christmas holidays, I had started a sandbox article on Pastoral Opera here, and, regrettably, when I found time to edit again after a rather busy time in real life, did allow myself to get distracted by other things. But, I've just gotten myself motivated again by checking out Silke Leopold's book, Monteverdi, Music in Transition, which has an entire chapter on "Pastoral Themes".


 * Thanks to all of you for all the active work that has been continuing on this project! Lini 09:54, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Welcome back! - Kleinzach 14:28, 10 April 2007 (UTC)