Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Opera/Archive 34

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Statistics: Opera title articles

The Category:Operas is now reconstituted and has been checked against The opera corpus. There are 1,027 articles which compares to approx. 1,635 titles liasted in The opera corpus and 1,800 articles in the New Grove Dictionary of Opera. This means that one third of the articles here are on operas, arguably the strongest area of our coverage. -- Kleinzach 02:55, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Revised figure (after removing some anomalies): 1,053 articles on opera in Category:Operas. -- Kleinzach 00:32, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

We've also now found a way of counting red links on The opera corpus. According to the figures a total of 727 opera and 15 composer red-linked articles remain to be written - approximately one third of the complete list. -- Kleinzach 03:20, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Images and fair use

Quoted from this. - Does it means I have to remove the images in List of recordings by Plácido Domingo article? I was hoping if I could keep them. The article and the images are pretty much related. What do guys think? It looks empty without the CD or DVD covers. Please.. and thank you. - Jay 18:11, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Hmm. I'm disappointed to see that the section on the project page has been changed without being introduced here first. Can we please keep to our practice of discussing it here frst? If we do that then we will have an agreed text that everybody knows about and everybody is actting on. The alternative is an unagreed text that nobody knows about and no-one is acting on. -- Kleinzach 01:36, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Jay, my understanding after discussing this with Mak is that we can't use any of the images in List of recordings by Plácido Domingo however the new project page now says Even on long articles, no more than 5 fair use images are really permissible (as a rough guide) so I think we need clarification. So Moreschi, what is your view? -- Kleinzach 01:55, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

What I've basically put on the project page is a rephrasing of official policies and guidelines, with more relevance to opera. The relevant "bleeding chunks" of policies here are Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria and Wikipedia:Non-free content. If you read those, it says you can't use fair use media in lists or galleries without providing critical commentary to which the images refer. You are, however, perfectly free to use the images in articles on the individual recordings, which is quite permissible. Cheers, Moreschi ^Talk 10:02, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

What we need on the project page is a simple, unambiguous text. We are not trying to refine or develop any WP policy. We are simply trying to explain how it works for us. The first paragraph (as agreed here) presents no problem, but the second paragraph is unclear. Would you like to revise it? (It's not necessary to cover special cases like galleries, sound media etc. in any case this section is about images.) Or alternatively I can write it if you prefer.

I published many photographs on my website between 1999 and 2005. I always obtained permission first and in almost every case the usage was conditional. (In WP-speak it was 'non-free'.)

The way it works is that a company (an agent, recording company, or opera company) pays a photographer to take some photos. The images are then used by the company, under an implied licence, for a particular purpose (e.g. pictures of a Met Tosca are used to promote Tosca at the Met). The company make the images available to other parties (magazines etc.) on the basis that usage remained strictly within the terms of the licence (with required credits). The photographer normally retains the copyright in the hope of being able to use the images a second time, perhaps for an exhibition, or a book or whatever.

In the case of WP, almost all the images are being lifted from other websites without anyone having the courtesy to contact the owners. They are uncredited and are being used outside the terms of the licence because we are not reviewing or promoting anything here. This is in contrast to the use of, say CD covers on Amazon, where everything is perfectly legal and straighforward because they are selling the recordings (not to mention receiving the images from the record companies).

The situation on WP is chaotic. Everyone knows that huge numbers of 'non-free' images are being published. However legal action to establish violations would be extremely difficult and expensive for the copyright holders. So the real issue here is Wikipedia's reputation. It looks shoddy - and it is shoddy - to have all this stuff on WP.

IMO if we want to have images we should contact the owners, ask for it and if we are successful put the material in WikiCommons. Final thought: if we are strict about not using non-free content we are more likely to get permission to use good material. (And if you've got this far thanks for reading this!) -- Kleinzach 01:37, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, I made it to the end.;-) Re "if we are strict about not using non-free content we are more likely to get permission to use good material". We should be strict about it because we have to be, and we should ask permission because it's right to. But frankly, given the current chaos on Wikipedia, and the fact that so many sites simply stream Wikipedia articles to their own sites, I doubt if it would increase our chances significantly of obtaining permission. There is also the issue that while Wikipedia can be good publicity for an artist, it is also open to vandalism, the addition of silly trivia and poor writing, not all of which gets repaired immediately. An artist or photographer may not want to see one of their photos associated with a goofy article. But that's not saying it's not worth trying.

Re the current, expanded notice on the Project Page. I think I'd delete the last sentence: "Wikipedia is a free-content project, and our rules on fair use are stricter than legal requirements", but otherwise I wouldn't shorten it. In fact, I'd add something to the first paragraph about how the photographs must be already in the public domain or have written permission from the photographers (or copyright holders) to release them under a free license. (Otherwise people might think that we don't allow old out-of-copyright photos or paintings.) Apart from that, I think it's reasonably clear, not too long, and touches the necessary bases. I especially like how it gives a page to use as a model, Concerto delle donne, and the link to the fair use rationales page. Just my 2 cents. Best, Voceditenore 08:40, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes I agree, except possibly for the sentence, "Even on long articles, no more than 5 fair use images are really permissible (as a rough guide), and fair use media should not be used when free media will do." which seems to imply that using fair use images is OK after all. I think it's worth trying to nail this down otherwise people won't follow it. How about the following version of the text:

We welcome contributions of good quality photographs for articles about operas, singers and composers etc. Images must either be already in the public domain or have written permission from the photographers (or copyright holders) to release them under a free license. Under this arrangement the holder (who would be credited) retains the copyright of the work, but grants permission to others to freely use and publish the image.

Regrettably we are unable to use photos of opera singers etc. on a 'fair use'/'fair dealing' basis in articles on the singers themselves. 'Fair use'/'fair dealing' images may only be acceptable in articles about actual publications, recordings etc. When it is necessary, fair use rationales must be provided. Fair use images cannot be used for purely decorative purposes and they must be closely tied to the article text ( a good example is at Concerto delle donne). (Galleries, i.e. collections of fair use material, whether visual or audio, are not permitted under any circumstances.)

Please note that this is an attempt at consensus, rather than my own interpretation of WP policy! -- Kleinzach 11:37, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Its ok guys, don’t worry, tho' it hurts but I understand :)) . I managed to get Domingo’s photos from Carmen and Sylvie Valayre articles. I am waiting for Domingo's agents to reply (hopefully). - Jay 04:13, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Jay, this illustrates what we've saying here! The Valayre image is indeed free! Unfortunately the Carmen one is not - its a fair use image (see the big red C symbol on the image page). It was apparently taken from the Tenorissimo site. Where it came from originally is not clear.

Jay, can you read the text above (my last post in italics) and tell me if any sentence is not clear? I can try and make it easier to understand if you can tell me what is confusing. Best. -- Kleinzach 04:32, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

About the photo from Carmen, it was there since 2005. Probably you should ask the contributor. The photo upload details "04:30, 19 December 2005" by Alexs letterbox. If it is not allowed, I'll remove it from Domingo's article. - Jay 04:42, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Jay we are all trying to follow the basic WP policies here. It's not for me or anybody else here to arbitrate or tell you what to do. It's really for you to understand how copytright works and how it applies to WP. The text on the project page - and I have just posted a new version (in the absence of any objections!) which I hope will be clearer - gives links to the various documents. If it still isn't clear then please say so. If it is clear then let's follow it. OK? Is that reasonable? -- Kleinzach 00:22, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Sopranos and otherwise

In my peregrinations to find opera singer articles that needed portraits, I removed the OP banner from Hayley Westenra (added by bot). I left it on Cinderella Liao for now, but plastered the article with several other tags, for obvious reasons, and have put friendly warnings on the (sole) editor's talk page, User talk:Blo, again for obvious reasons.

As for real sopranos, I managed to add public domain portraits for Nancy Storace, Elisabeth Olin, and Faustina Bordoni. Best, Voceditenore 08:29, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Excellent. Someone else that I've been in contact with has been adding pictures to singer articles on the basis that any photograph/image over 70 years old is automatically out of copyright. Do we agree with this interpretation? (I have a collection of photos of early singers that I could make available if there were no hassles getting them approved.) -- Kleinzach 23:58, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

The way I understand it is that the copyright lasts until 70 years after the death of the photographer, unless the photograph was already published before 1923, i.e. in a book or as a post card. But I could be wrong. For a two-dimensional work of art, the copyright is likewise 70 years after the death of the artist, and in the US, the photograph of the artwork is not copyright. See {{PD-art-life-70}}. Best, Voceditenore 09:09, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

{{PD-art-life-70}} refers to the artist as an author which looks odd to me. But if we can work on the principal that anything published before 1923 is OK that gives us a lot of scope. As you'll know a huge number of postcards of singers were published during the first three decades of the 20th century. -- Kleinzach 10:59, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

According to Wikipedia, "author" in this sense refers generically to the "creator" of the work, whether it's text, a software programme, a painting, building, sculpture, photograph, musical composition etc. Best, Voceditenore 11:15, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Another thing, the 70 year limit does not apply to publication. My understanding is that according to copyright law, the publication must be specifically before 1923 . As an example, if the photographer died less than 70 years ago, and the photo was published in 1923 or later, it would still be in copyright, even though its publication was more than 70 years ago. However, if the photographer died less than 70 years ago, but the photo was published in 1922, it would be public domain. All very confusing. Voceditenore 11:37, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

. . . . as the result of them changing the system - but we have to live with it. Anyway if pre-1923 is OK we still have a lot of material that can be used. -- Kleinzach 00:09, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Update re Cinderella Liao. The article is currently up for deletion [1] But whether it stays or not, I've removed the Opera Project banner. She's never sung in an opera (although I guess she's hoping to some day). So far she has only sung a few arias in concerts with youth and student orchestras. Best, Voceditenore 07:41, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

La cifra

Hi everyone. I just started the page for Salieri's opera La cifra. I've only been able to find one good resource on the web for the opera (and it's in Dutch). I'd appriciate help from anyone who may know of more resources.Nrswanson 05:09, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

I found a bit more stuff and added it. I also changed the performance dates given, as they don't agree with anything else written about it. I'm not all that sure that http://www.operaweetjes.nl/ is completely reliable source. It certainly appeared to have got the date of the premiere wrong. Plus, it said that it had its next performance in "Keulen" (which I take to mean Cologne ????). But according to the German press, in 2006 La Cifra received its first performance in Cologne, and the source I used for the world premiere date didn't mention any performances in Cologne in 1793. In fact, it lists the first performance in Germany as Dresden, 1790. Best, Voceditenore 08:52, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree with you on all points. It seems odd that an opera company would make such a grevious error in scholarship.Nrswanson 09:07, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

That site isn't from or for an opera company. It's a personal web site, as far as I can make out. Best, Voceditenore 09:25, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Grove has an article almost certainly by John Rice. I recommend starting off with Grove it makes it all much easier to get the basic facts from a proper source and an expert, although I see now that you have got some good references, -- Kleinzach 10:09, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Europa Riconosciuta

Hi everyone. I created a page for another Salieri operaEuropa Riconosciuta. Nrswanson 07:28, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

This opera is also referred to as L'Europa Riconosciuta in some other articles. That is the opera's actual name so I am wondering if we should change the article to L'Europa Riconosciuta.Nrswanson 07:30, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

John Rice in Grove gives Europa riconosciuta so let's stick to that title. Have you copy/pasted the La Scala synopsis? We can't do that as we explained to you when you added all the material to the Verdi articles from the Verdi website.-- Kleinzach 09:34, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

I know it. I'm in the process of rewording it as we speak. I put it up there as a refrence for myself while I'm doing it. it won't be there for much longer.Nrswanson 09:43, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't think this is an ideal way of working. It would be better to get a libretto and write the synopsis yourself. Paraphrasing another text still carries dangers with it.

Also I see now that Jimfbleak changed the title to the 'English' form. The correct title is now a re-direct (which makes it tricky to change.) I have written to Jimfbleak explaining how the capitalization works and asking him not to do it again. -- Kleinzach 09:54, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

If you read the article you would know that the libretto has never been in print and is unavailable to the public. As to the way I work, that's my choice thank you and I will do what works for me. As long as the finished product is good why should you care?Nrswanson 10:22, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Actually, the libretto is available on line in PDF format here. But leaving that aside, Nrswanson, it's better to use a sandbox, or your user page while working on something like that, rather than the main article space. Otherwise, until it's finished, the article contains large chunks of plagiarised copyright material. Which is huge no-no on Wikipedia. You also need to watch plagiarism elsewhere in the article. For example, the sentence: Though a traditional opera seria, the work defies many of the form's conventions: a murder is seen onstage, for instance, and an extended finale graces each of the two acts, a practice drawn from opera comica. is a direct quote from the NY Times article listed in footnote 2. Again, I really think it would be better to work on the draft, re-writing the source material in your own words before publishing it directly into the article. Plus, if articles are discovered to be largely plagiarised they can be speedily deleted, and you will have lost all your work. Best, Voceditenore 11:02, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Good to know that the libretto is available in Italian. Unfortunately I don't speak Italian and it isn't available in English. If you prefer, I will not do any temporary copy pastes anymore. I always go back and change things later so they are no longer direct quotes. I don't usually like to do that right away when I'm creating an article becuase I may find more information that I want to work in from another source. It usually takes me a day or so to get it all worked out. I just created the article 3 hours ago and i'm still working on it so give me a break please.Nrswanson 11:17, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Well it's all fixed, and it probably would have been fixed sooner if I didn't have to waist time defending myself because honestly you weren't asking me to do anything that i wasn't already planning on doing. Sigh. I just have a different methodology at getting there. I build the frame of the article first and in doing that I sometimes copy paste while collecting data. Then I go back and reorganize, reword, etc. so that there is no plagiarism and the information flows in the most logical way. And that whole process takes me a day at most, usually less. Just one day.You shouldn't get so bent out of shape. I spent 8 hours working on stuff today and all I got were complaints even though the final product turned out great. I'm not sure I want to do this anymore if I'm going to be attacked. Nrswanson 11:38, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm not at all bent out of shape. I was just offering a friendly suggestion for avoiding inadvertantly losing your work or having it deleted, and having to work under pressure, i.e. 8 hours straight. For future articles, you might want to consider creating this page: User:Nrswanson/sandbox and then work on the drafts there until they're pretty much in their final publishable form. But that's just a suggestion. Best, Voceditenore 11:54, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

I like the idea and I probably will do that in the future.Nrswanson 12:02, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately the synopsis is still substantially the same as the La Scala text. I don't think that changing the odd word here and there makes it usable on WP. I don't wish to be difficult about this, but IMO if we start taking texts and put them up with small changes it's going to cause us problems in the future. If we write our own synopses, instead of using other people's, then we'll be alright. I think we have to delete this one. -- Kleinzach 13:22, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm. It's pretty 'close paraphrasing' in several places, and not just the synopsis. I'm afraid that one of my students would get the essay handed back to re-write.;-) But this isn't academia, and I haven't been around here long enough to see how close is 'too close' on Wikipedia. It also has quite a few typos. But I'm loathe to do anything about it, in case the synopsis does get substantially deleted. One thing I did do, was change the scene titles as they were still verbatim from the La Scala synopsis. Best, Voceditenore 18:23, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

This isn't plagiarism as no-one is stealing credit for it, but on the other hand if the text is identifiable as a slightly altered re-write of a published work then it is a potential copyright violation. If the La Scala synopsis had been summarized (reduced), rather than paraphrased, we probably wouldn't have any problem. So, can we ask Nrswanson: how would you like to proceed? Would you like to continue working on the text? Or would you prefer to just see it deleted? -- Kleinzach 00:02, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Since I am not working with source material or first hand knowledge of the opera I am loath to depart too much from the sources mentioned in fear of making an error of information. If I had actually seen the opera or had a full length english libretto I would feel more comfortable writing something far more original. As it is, my only source for the opera's story is the english La scala synopsis. I can try to scale it down further if you think that would be more prefable. Although, I think the synopsis is pretty concise as it is so that may be difficult to do. Nrswanson 04:39, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Oh and I think that the article should probably be changed to L'Europa Riconosciuta becuase that is the name that Salieri and La Scala both use for the opera and the name used on the Salieri, La Scala, and Gaspare Pacchierotti wikipedia pages. I think there were a few other pages on wikipedia that used this title as well.Nrswanson 04:42, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Re the title Well, for starters take a look at the original poster for the 1778 performance which I added to the article yesterday. ;-) Ditto the title used on the libretto in the external links, which was provided by the library of the Milan's music conservatory (Biblioteca del conservatorio «Giuseppe Verdi» di Milano) and still contains the original dedication to Archduke Ferdinand, and the address to the Milanese public. Actually, the 'History of the Theatre' section on La Scala's site refers to it both ways: as L'Europa... when it talks about the original opening of the theatre and as Europa... when it talks about the re-opening. But minor errors can creep into texts and go unnoticed.

Two things contribute to the perpetuation of writers wrongly using the L'Europa... form. [1] A mistaken knowledge of what the opera is about (not surprising since it hadn't been performed for well over 200 years). As we all know, it's not about the continent of Europe, it's about a woman named Europa. Italian uses articles much more than English. For example, you have to say 'the my book' (il mio libro), However the article 'the' is never used with proper names of people. [2] The Italian habit of preceding the title of a work with 'the' when referring to it as a whole. For example, they say "La Così fan tutte di Mozart...", "Il Falstaff di Verdi...", "L'Adelaide di Borgogna di Rossini...". Not having seen any correspondence by Salieri himself, in the original Italian, I have no idea how he actually wrote the title, but I suspect, if he did use L'Europa... at times it was because of [2].

If other articles on Wikipedia use the L'Europa... form, it simply means they have re-copied the error from one article to another, ditto their source texts. In my view, those articles should be changed, not this article. Best, Voceditenore 06:09, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

I have corrected the links in the other pages (this is something we often have to do) and I've made redirects from L'Europa riconosciuta and L'Europa Riconosciuta. I hope that obviates any more problems about the name. -- Kleinzach 06:36, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately we still have the problem of the synopsis. I'm disappointed that Nrswanson hasn't addressed this. Here is an example of the problem - from the introduction - comparing the WP article Europa Riconosciuta with the text on the La Scala website. Text which is in common is in bold:

Wikipedia Europa Riconosciuta version:

Princess Europa of Tyre was formerly betrothed to young Prince Isséo. Their plans to wed are ruined when the king of Crete, Asterio, abducts Europa from her father’s palace and forced her to marry him. Europa's father King Agenore of Tyre, tries to find his daughter but fails. In despair, he leaves his throne to his niece Semele instead of Europa on the condition that Semele must marry the man who kills the first foreigner to land on Tyre’s shores. In this way Europa’s abduction will be avenged. After Agenore’s death, Asterio sets sail from Crete with the intention of placing Europa on the Tyrian throne.

La Scala website version:

Europa, princess of Tyre, was once betrothed to the young prince Isséo. But Asterio, king of Crete, abducted her from her father’s palace and secretly made her his wife. Agenore, Europa ’s father and king of Tyre, searched in vain for his daughter but eventually decided to leave the throne to his niece Semele. He laid down moreover that she shall marry that man who kills the first foreigner to land on Tyre’s shores, thus avenging Europa’s abduction. Having heard of Agenore’s death, Asterio set sail from Crete with the intention of placing Europa on the Tyrian throne.

It's obvious that our version is a re-hash of Scala's. -- Kleinzach 07:05, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Re re-working the text Well it's considerably less of a re-hash than it was before, and gradually getting better. Nrswanson, please don't interpret this discussion as 'attacking' you personally. The Wikipedia 'plagiarism patrol' (they use 'plagiarism' as a shorthand for 'copyright violation') can be quite ruthless. A while back, there was a well-intentioned contributor who translated entries from a 2005 Italian opera dictionary into English and uploaded them to many articles. It was a real mess. The admins (outside the Opera Project) reduced many articles to stubs, and the entire article on Le duc d'Albe was deleted! I queried one of the admins about this as I had seen the source text that the editor had used, and thought that reaction was a bit much. He said that a translation counts as copyright vio, even if a few words or phrases (or their order) had been changed. So we really do have to me careful. Having said all that. I've compared the original libretto to La Scala's synopsis, and theirs is virtually a verbatim translation of the settings and stage directions in the libretto. But this doen't mean that we can lift their translation. Translations are copyright, even if the original work being translated is out of copyright.

Nrswanson wrote: "Since I am not working with source material or first hand knowledge of the opera I am loath to depart too much from the sources mentioned in fear of making an error of information. [...] I can try to scale it down further if you think that would be more prefable." I understand the problems, believe me. But I think it can be scaled down further and thus avoid too close an adherence to La Scala's translation, which would be preferable. Primarily, by just sticking to describing the action and wherever possible leaving out the (often overblown) adjectives and adverbs describing the people, the settings, and their reactions, etc. I see you've now gone quite some way towards that, already. Once you're finished, and the... er.. dust has settled, I'll go through it comparing it to La Scala's translation and the original libretto and make minor adjustments if need be. In the process, I can also add the titles of some of the principle arias where they occur in the action. But I doubt if I'll be able to get to that for at least a couple of weeks. Best. Voceditenore 07:22, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Achieving balance. Despite my caveats, I do think we have to avoid being too picky about this. If I had never seen La Scala's English synopsis and instead worked directly from the stage directions in the original libretto, I'm sure my translation would show considerable similarities to La Scala's, simply because there is often only one optimal way to translate a phrase or sentence into idiomatic English. Best Voceditenore 07:41, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

It is very generous of you to offer to act as Nrswanson's mentor on this. Having been through this situation several times I know exactly how much work is involved. No-one is more irritated by copyright-paranoia than I am, but to save us all a lot of unnecessary trouble I sincerely ask Nrswanson not to do this again. It needed a team of four or five editors to remove the potential copyright violations from the Verdi articles (see Archive 18). -- Kleinzach 08:06, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Let me know what you think of the synopsis now.Nrswanson 10:49, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

I haven't had time to do a detailed comparison, but it looks like it would now escape the copyright police. When I go through it and add the arias, I'll give it a once-over and perhaps polish up the prose in places. But for now it seems fine. Best, Voceditenore 09:17, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Thank you so much for your help, feedback and advice! Nrswanson 03:01, 1 July 2007 (UTC)