Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Opera/Archive 56

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Origins of Opera: merge to Opera?
The anomalous Origins of Opera has been around since 2006 - without being much developed. Most of it is redundant/covered elsewhere so I've suggested a merge with the main Opera article. I've added headings to facilitate this.--Kleinzach (talk) 01:10, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Agree, merge it with opera - Jay (talk) 05:39, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks, but I withdrew the merger tag on 8 April after other editors thought it would be better rewritten. Not much has happened since then except that some of text has been shifted around. The article originated when an editor removed existing text from elsewhere to create a parallel text, for example the opening paragraph was copied from here. I don't know if someone else would like to have a look at it? --Kleinzach (talk) 00:41, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
 * “Origin of opera” is the same with “History of opera”, for that in my opinion “Origin of opera” content should be transferred into “Opera” unless if someone could add more beneficial content into it. At the moment it serves no purpose at all, better delete than keeping it - Jay (talk) 02:05, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Its frustrating. No significant work has been done on the article. It hasn't been touched for the last 10 days. I'd support deletion rather than leave it in its present state. --Kleinzach (talk) 00:59, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
 * A fair amount was added before. Relatively little is exactly the same. All the arguments from the other discussion when your first proposal was rejected still apply. We need an overall article surveying the various music drama forms. We could rename it I suppose, although I don't see any reason to other than your irrational dislike of it. Would you be happier if it was renamed to something and moved out of your personal space? Johnbod (talk) 02:40, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
 * For the record, the "origins" section in Opera is 1,107 chars, Origins of opera 8,133, and the whole opera article text, after the lead, is 36,316 (all visible character counts - as Folatin pointed out last time, "Opera" is a near-maximum 52K in total). Either opera is unbalanced, or stuff is lost, as is the survey aspect. Johnbod (talk) 03:00, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

We don't have two distinct, separate texts. Much, if not all of it, is identical. For example the whole 154-word paragraph (1.1) in Opera from '' ""The word "opera" means "work" in Italian. . . (to). . . "A later work by Peri, Euridice, dating from 1600, is the first opera score to have survived to the present day." '' has been just copied into the Origins of opera article. It seems the person who started the article copied material from other articles, intending to rewrite it into a proper article, but never got round to it.--Kleinzach (talk) 01:24, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually that is not correct - look at them again! Most of the first para is different. The second para is I think the longest duplicate passage.  I don't see duplication on this scale as an issue. Johnbod (talk) 01:31, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

This is the text from Opera:


 * The word opera means "work" in Italian (from Latin opus meaning "work" or "labour") suggesting that it combines the arts of solo and choral singing, declamation, acting and dancing in a staged spectacle. Dafne by Jacopo Peri was the earliest composition considered opera, as understood today. It was written around 1597, largely under the inspiration of an elite circle of literate Florentine humanists who gathered as the "Camerata de' Bardi". Significantly, Dafne was an attempt to revive the classical Greek drama, part of the wider revival of antiquity characteristic of the Renaissance. The members of the Camerata considered that the "chorus" parts of Greek dramas were originally sung, and possibly even the entire text of all roles; opera was thus conceived as a way of "restoring" this situation. Dafne is unfortunately lost. A later work by Peri, Euridice, dating from 1600, is the first opera score to have survived to the present day.

and here is the text from Origins of opera marking all the identical text in pink:


 * The word "opera" means "work" in Italian (from the plural of Latin opus meaning "work" or "labour") suggesting that it combines the arts of solo and choral singing, declamation, acting and dancing in a staged spectacle. The form arose in Italy from a background of various forms of courtly entertainment, and though the first operas were modestly staged compared to other contemporary forms of sung drama, opera outlasted these, and was to make the transition from the court to the public theatre, having taken on the spectacular stagings typical of the intermedio.


 * "Dafne" by Jacopo Peri was the earliest composition considered opera, as understood today. It was written around 1597, largely under the inspiration of an elite circle of literate Florentine humanists who gathered as the "Camerata". Significantly, Dafne was an attempt to revive the classical Greek drama, part of the wider revival of antiquity characteristic of the Renaissance. The members of the Camerata considered that the "chorus" parts of Greek dramas were originally sung, and possibly even the entire text of all roles; opera was thus conceived as a way of "restoring" this situation. "Dafne" is unfortunately lost. A later work by Peri, Euridice, dating from 1600, is the first opera score to have survived to the present day.
 * Traditions of staged sung music and drama go back to both secular and religious forms from the Middle Ages, and at the time opera first appears the Italian intermedio had courtly equivalents in various countries.

I'm sorry I don't have time to do this for the rest of the text. --Kleinzach (talk) 01:56, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Exactly! I have added the extra text you carefully omitted. What do you mean "I'm sorry I don't have time to do this for the rest of the text"? As far as I can see NONE of the rest of the article duplicates Opera at all!  You really have a most slippery way of conducting a discussion! Johnbod (talk) 10:48, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Slippery? After taking the trouble to provide the exact text duplicated? That's WP:UNCIVIL. The rest of the article consisted of unrelated, unconnected, unchronological paragraphs. It's clear they were taken from other sources. As another editor said here  "The basic problem here is the Origins of opera is a mess. It starts with the Renaissance and ends with the Middle Ages!"   --Kleinzach (talk) 23:53, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I thought we would get round to "UNCIVIL" before long. You took the trouble (not a huge one) to copy the duplicated text (which from my remarks above I was clearly already better aware of than you), whilst going the extra mile to cut out most of the unduplicated text, adding a completely incorrect claim that there was further duplication! Folatin's suggestion was to expand it, which is certainly to be desired. Yours to delete it, for reasons that remain obscure. At the moment the article works backward chronologically, largely because there is very little stuff on the earlier period, and clearly it has a remoter connection with opera itself. "It's clear they were taken from other sources" ! Johnbod (talk) 02:09, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

I thought we agreed to keep this article and expand it? "Overlap" is inevitable, as was the case with our sub-articles on Italian, German, French opera etc. There is plenty of material out there with which to bulk out the "Origins" page - try the first 50 or so pages of Grout's A Short History of Opera, for example. --Folantin (talk) 08:20, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately more than a month has past and no-one has come forward to expand it and remove the duplicate text. --Kleinzach (talk) 13:15, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
 * There's no time limit on these things. I've been waiting for over a year for somebody to expand and fix the 19th and 20th century sections of Italian opera but nobody's been interested enough, in spite of my asking on several occasions. --Folantin (talk) 13:41, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Agreed, nor is there any need to "remove" a duplicated passage of about 150 words. Johnbod (talk) 14:03, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

The problem with this article dates back to September 2006. It hasn't changed significantly since then. This is a wikilinked encyclopedia and there is no reason to duplicate text (as opposed to summarizing which is sometimes desirable). If anyone can point me to WP policies that encourage duplicating large blocks of text on multiple pages, I will revise my opinion, however I think what we have here is close to self-plagiarizing. --Kleinzach (talk) 00:41, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Apart from 150-odd words from here, where do you think it came from? Johnbod (talk) 00:53, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Dates of premieres and musical timelines
I've always been a bit confused about linking dates. For example the sentence:  "The opera was first performed in Prague on 31 March 1928" . How should it be wikified?

Recently I've noticed some people are using a system based on the Timeline of musical events. The link looks like this: 1928. Following this system, the sentence above would be '' "The opera was first performed in Prague on 31 March 1928." '' Clicking on the 1928 brings up the 1928 in music page.

What do other people think? Is linking to a list of other musical works a good idea? Should we adopt this form? --Kleinzach (talk) 06:42, 22 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Formatting dates according to Mos:date achieves compliance in the date's representation with the user's settings. I consider this to be useful. I have no opinion on the usefulness of links to "yyyy in music". Autoformatting, besides its useful formatting feature, has of course the disadvantage of creating unnecessary links. For dates between 1970 and 2038 the template Template:Date can be used instead. Michael Bednarek (talk) 09:59, 22 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Thank you, but is it useful to link to, for example, 31 March? --Kleinzach (talk) 10:50, 22 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Not in my opinion, and I think the MOS also discourages it. Michael Bednarek (talk) 14:16, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Proposal
References to premieres should be linked to 'Year in music' pages, for example "The opera was first performed in Prague on 31 March 1928"  - coded as "The opera was first performed in Prague on 31 March 1928." --Kleinzach (talk) 03:41, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm not against this, but it will presumably also mean that we will need to add the opera to the list in 1928 in music - where I see that various different formulations are in use. Lots of scope for errors and omissions there. (Maybe we could get a bot to put everything in Category:Operas into the appropriate year?  Or maybe not.) GuillaumeTell 13:23, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, writing up the list in 1928 in music etc. could be done gradually later. I'm not sure about bots. Maybe it would be useful if one or us - it would have to be a Windows user - learned how to use AWB. --Kleinzach (talk) 13:54, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I've added this to WikiProject Opera/Article styles and formats, using 'may' rather than 'should'. I hope that's satisfactory. --Kleinzach (talk) 00:47, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Article format
Despite having standard formats, many new and IP authors wrote articles their own ways. I have standardized formats (Title headers, frame for roles including the date format, Selected recordings and Synopsis) for composers below:- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Gaetano Donizetti, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Georges Bizet, Gioachino Rossini, Claudio Monteverdi, Antonio Vivaldi, Christoph Willibald Gluck, Giacomo Meyerbeer, Jacques Offenbach, André Ernest Modeste Grétry, Joseph Haydn, Richard Wagner, George Frideric Handel, Antonín Dvořák, Fromental Halévy

Other problem we should look at is the reference section. There are many "title headers" that we can see now in opera articles for this section such as below:- and many more... I believe we should have standard title for this section too. What do you guys think? - Jay (talk) 18:03, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
 * References
 * Sources
 * Source
 * External links
 * E-book
 * Source notes
 * Notes
 * See also
 * Bibliography
 * Historical sources
 * References and further reading


 * Yes, I agree, here are my ideas on this:


 * The following are OK:
 * See also (for other WP pages)
 * Bibliography
 * References
 * Sources
 * External links


 * The following should be removed:
 * Source . . . should be Sources
 * E-book . . . should be under Bibliography
 * Source notes . . . should be References
 * Notes . . . should be References
 * Historical sources . . . should be Sources
 * References and further reading . . . should be divided into References and Bibliography
 * --Kleinzach (talk) 03:32, 24 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Maybe someone should explain to me why "Sources" is preferable when there is only one source listed.  There is already a bot that automatically changes to plural, so I've given up on being consistent myself...
 * I dont know if there is code to distinguish footnotes from bare citations; "Notes" should mean notes, "References" references, and "Notes and references" should be used when appropriate.
 * I admit I dont understand the convention of gathering all "External links" into one section, except when intended as a "Further browsing" section.  Certainly online references should be cited inline, and links to literary sources (Project Gutenburg) can be left within text. Sparafucil (talk) 01:39, 4 May 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm a bit confused by this "Notes" vs. "References" thing, myself, as well as the distinction that is apparently being made here between "References" and "Bibliography". In my experience (which is fairly extensive, but mainly to do with print media), a Bibliography is a listing of all the materials consulted in writing an article or a book, whether they are specifically cited in the text or not. A "References" (or "Sources", or "Works/Literature Cited") list, on the other hand, is exactly the same thing, but includes only the items cited in the text. (See, e.g., the Chicago Manual of Style, section 15.74.) Those citations may be author-date intext cites (Chicago Manual, Harvard Style, etc.), or Notes (footnotes or endnotes). On Wikipedia generally, these conventions seem mainly to apply as well, except for the frequent use of "References" in place of "Notes".
 * In the case of Wikipedia articles on opera in particular, I observe another peculiarity, and that is to omit items from the Bibliography if they are cited in the Notes. This is certainly not normal practice in scholarly publications, nor does it seem to be the usual practice for Wikipedia articles in other areas, though the distinction between cited and uncited sources is sometimes made by having a "Further Reading" list in addition to the "Sources" (or "References") lists. I suspect this may stem from another, rather more old-fashioned convention in scholarly publications, which applies more to articles than to books, and that is to document sources only in the footnotes and dispense with a bibliography altogether. In this case, the full bibliographical citation is given the first time a work is cited, and subsequent references use an abbreviated author-title form, plus the page number. On Wikipedia, I find this is a risky form to adopt (even riskier is the use of abbreviations like "ibid." and "loc. cit."), because later editors may insert new citations or rearrange text, without noticing the need to rewrite citations that are already in place.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 01:14, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
 * My reply to Jay (above) was really to confirm existing practice. Jerome Kohl is of course right in thinking this could be more formulated in more detail. Much of this is not specific to opera, so it's better for us to follow WP practice where it has been properly thought out and specified, so if anyone has links to useful pages that would be appreciated. On the other hand if workable rules have not been developed we can do that here. It wouldn't be the first time that the Opera Project is in advance of the rest of WP.
 * Coming from a print background myself, I don't think I'd entirely agree with Jerome's idea of a 'bibliography', but I do think it could be defined. I also see a clear distinction between 'references' (which are specific, text-marked/linked, references to other publications) and 'notes' (equivalent to footnotes in the print world, which give additional information that the author has decided not to include in the main text).
 * WP is different from print, so our system is obviously not going to be the same. 'Sources' has been a convenient section for giving main references, avoiding putting numbers on every sentence.
 * Jerome Kohl writes  "I observe another peculiarity, and that is to omit items from the Bibliography if they are cited in the Notes. This is certainly not normal practice in scholarly publications, nor does it seem to be the usual practice for Wikipedia articles in other areas . . ."  Yes, I agree we shouldn't do this.
 * Jerome Kohl: If you are going to follow upon this, which i assume you will, can you possibly number your points? That will make it easier to respond to them. Thanks. Best. --Kleinzach (talk) 01:14, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Composers bio-infobox template up for deletion
The recently-made bio-infobox for composers is up for deletion, see the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page.--Kleinzach (talk) 14:07, 24 April 2008 (UTC)


 * This was deleted on 2 May here. It was recreated by CenturionZ 1 today.--Kleinzach (talk) 03:32, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Composer of the Month for June?
Are we going to have another 10 from the major minors list? Any preferences?--Kleinzach (talk) 10:04, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Make it international and pick some composers from the Classical period. --Folantin (talk) 10:35, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Fine by me. Go ahead and make a recommendation. --Kleinzach (talk) 10:49, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I'd take Traetta, Piccinni and Jean-François Le Sueur for starters. Others can have their pick. --Folantin (talk) 08:27, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
 * My suggestions are Benda, Gazzaniga, Cimarosa and Storace. --GuillaumeTell 10:10, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
 * One thing to consider the future is what anniversaries are coming up. That way we can have better quality articles linked from the portal.--Peter cohen (talk) 21:28, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

If we add Folantin and GT's suggestions together we get:
 * Georg Benda (1722-1795): Romeo und Julie (1776)
 * Tommaso Traetta (1727-1779): Antigona (NB: page currently a redirect)
 * Niccolò Piccinni (1728-1800): Didon, Iphigénie en Tauride, Roland
 * Giuseppe Gazzaniga (1743-1818): Don Giovanni Tenorio
 * Domenico Cimarosa (1749-1801): Il maestro di capella
 * Jean-François Le Sueur (1760-1837): La caverne, Ossian, ou Les bardes, La mort d'Adam
 * Stephen Storace (1763-1796): Gli equivoci, No song, no supper

Is this OK, or do we need to prune a few titles off the list? (This month we have 11 titles, though I'm not sure how many worthwhile articles will come out of the process.) --Kleinzach (talk) 07:19, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I think it's OK, and I plan to deal with the composers I suggested. I also have plans for some of the redlinked ones in this month's list. --GuillaumeTell 09:31, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Can I take this opportunity to make a plug for 'team work'? I usually base my stubs on the print Grove, and I'm delighted if other people add information from sources that I don't have or indeed CD inserts. I'm also please to see copy editing checks being done. I make literals/typos like anybody else! --Kleinzach (talk) 02:17, 9 May 2008 (UTC)


 * I've put up the list above. --Kleinzach (talk) 10:21, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

More categories
I recently set up and populated Category:Opera critics. I can think of a number of prominent British omissions such as Andrew Porter, Rodney Milnes, Tom Sutcliffe, Max Loppert, and there are no doubt others, both British amd non-British, who deserve articles. Then, happening upon Ezio Frigerio, I noticed that we don't have a category or categories for opera set and/or costume designers (maybe Category:Opera designers?). Other examples that I could find are Sue Blane, Franca Squarciapino, John Bury and Quay Brothers but again there are omissions: Maria Bjørnson, John Gunter, Ralph Koltai, Stephanos Lazaridis, Alison Chitty, lots more. Any thoughts? --GuillaumeTell 17:43, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Category:Opera critics already has a good number of articles. I'm also in favour of having a category for 'Opera designers'. --Kleinzach (talk) 01:47, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Ditto. A good idea. Re critics, John Steane would be an obvious choice too. We also have Category:Opera publications which I'd like to expand (when I get the chance) with short articles on other opera periodicals both foreign and domestic, e.g. Opera (UK), Opera Now (UK), L'opera (Italy), Das Opernglas (Germany), etc. Articles on critics and opera specialist publications also help add credibility to their reference in other articles. Voceditenore (talk) 08:00, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Category:Opera designers is now in place. --<b style="color:forestgreen;">Guillaume</b><i style="color:blue;">Tell</i> 10:47, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Biographical infobox on Joseph Haydn
There is now a biographical infobox on the Joseph Haydn article. See Talk:Joseph_Haydn. There is also a discussion on the Composers Project. --Kleinzach (talk) 01:17, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
 * This template - deleted on 2 May but restored today - has also been added to Beethoven. --Kleinzach (talk) 03:36, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh geez! Yet again. By the way, I had already added this note to this dubious exercise Voceditenore (talk) 07:48, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Which only serves to show that the classical music editors are completely at odds with the consensus around the rest of Wikipedia. If we can carry on living in our own little world with no regard for anyone else, we will be seen as out of touch. Guys, swallow you pride and accept the views of the rest of Wikipedia. Currently classical music is the weakest major music genre on Wikipedia. If only editors had this much passion editing articles.  Centy  – [ reply ]• contribs  – 12:00, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Jeez. Not this again. I would have thought argumentum ad nauseam comes under disrupting Wikipedia to prove a point. Who knows more about classical music on Wikipedia than the classical music editors? How about letting people who know about the subject decide? I don't go over to the geology articles and tell editors over there what to do. Wikipedia is not a democracy and there is no policy saying we must be blown about on the winds of fashion. "If only editors had this much passion editing articles". Well, be careful what you wish for. No Wikipedians are more passionate than the tendentious ignoramuses who fight our endless nationalist and ethnic edit wars. They rarely improve the quality of the affected articles though. --Folantin (talk) 13:27, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I dont keep track on the discussions about infobox but I believed we have discussed this for many times, not only in here but in Classical project too (In Biography too, I think). Why this issue has to come up again and again? - Jay (talk) 03:57, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
 * "Why this issue has to come up again and again?" It's funny how it always seems to come up around this time of the year. Must be something to do with the weather. I have recurring nightmares about being trapped in these endless infobox debates on blazingly hot days. --Folantin (talk) 08:49, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Help to identify
Can anyone have a listen to this and see if they can identify the occasion and singers? It is currently linked as a free recording at Così fan tutte. Cheers Gustav von Humpelschmumpel (talk) 12:11, 12 May 2008 (UTC)


 * The link doesn't work anymore - "page not found". But on the same site, is a description of what it probably was + the MP3 files. . Note that the poster says it's got a Creative Commons 2.5 (Licenza: Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale - Condividi allo stesso modo 2.5) but that's obviously untrue. See Amazon.com. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 12:43, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks- the mp3s have a logo of libermusica.it which seems to be the origin- this is the page it originally seems to have come from and gives the full list of performers. As it is the Glyndebourne Opera and was therefore performed in the UK in 1935 is it possible the recording is now in the public domain? Gustav von Humpelschmumpel (talk) 13:01, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
 * There is a newer cleaned up 2004 release by Naxos here - Amazon.com Amazon UK - apparently this was the first ever recording of the opera. Gustav von Humpelschmumpel (talk) 13:06, 12 May 2008 (UTC)


 * For sound recordings and broadcasts in the UK, 50 years from the end of the calendar year in which the work was created, or, if the work is released within that time: 50 years from the end of the calendar year in which the work was first released. 1935+50 = 1985. So I guess it's in the public domain in the UK. But I'm not sure about the US (which is relevant to English Wikipedia). There's good chance it's not. See United_States_copyright_law. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 13:39, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Interesting. According to this link (scroll down to sound recordings) it says that recordings made between 1923 to 1 March 1989, in the public domain in its home country as of 1 Jan. 1996, or, there was US publication within 30 days of the foreign publication are "subject to state common law protection" and will only enter the public domain in the United States on 15 Feb, 2067 ...so a long time to wait. Gustav von Humpelschmumpel (talk) 14:02, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Category:Opera terminology vs. Template:Opera terms
Could someone explain to me why these two different types of groups exists? It seems to me that either all terms should be the category and the template so named, or that the Template takes the place of the category. Or what am I misunderstanding? (Thanks in advance.) -- kosboot (talk) 18:24, 14 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, to take the easy one first, the template is for a navigation box that can be added to articles (usually at the foot). It's purpose is to make it easier to move from one article to another. Explaining WP categories is a bit more difficult but you can think of it as a tag which is useful for grouping articles. Tagging articles with categories and making a navigation box are entirely different processes, so there is no 'versus'. If there is an article in Category:Opera terminology which is appropriate in the navigation box, we can add it. Development of the navbox will always follow categorization. Does that help? --Kleinzach (talk) 10:26, 15 May 2008 (UTC)


 * So if I understand you correctly, a template is pretty much a way to facilitate navigation. So the category "Opera Terminology" and the Template "Opera Terms" should really contain the same words, yes?  I'm asking beacause I would like to add some. -- kosboot (talk) 13:08, 15 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Templates can be made for many purposes - Template:Opera terms happens to be a navbox. There are 117 items in Category:Opera terminology, 53 in the navbox. IMO it's not necessary to have all 117 in the navbox. Some articles are of marginal interest. Take Acoustic enhancement for example, that's not really an opera 'term' as such. So I think it's best to look at the articles one by one to see if they genuinely belong in the navbox. --Kleinzach (talk) 14:26, 15 May 2008 (UTC)


 * I should also point out that opera genres (which sometimes appear in Category:Opera terminology) have their own separate navbox, (see Template:Opera genres), so they don't go in Template:Opera terms. --Kleinzach (talk) 14:32, 15 May 2008 (UTC)