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Nerone/Composers of the month for November and December

I took the liberty of moving Mascagni's opera to the page Nerone, disambiguating the original, and creating a new link for Boito's opera of the same name. I've cleaned up some of the confused links, but I haven't caught them all, and I have to run right now - I'll continue later this afternoon.

Also, what about a composer for November? Might I suggest something related to American opera? I've noticed a fair number of pieces getting short shrift here. --User:AlbertHerring ^{Io son l'orecchio e tu la bocca: parla!} 18:13, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

How about "Women composers"? There's something like 17 in the opera corpus, with varying numbers of operas - most don't have more than one or two. Some are American. Vanished user ^talk 19:24, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

17 might be a bit too much. How about we pick 5 female opera composers, according to a totally POV criteria, and do them? Moreschi 20:20, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good. I wonder if Germaine Tailleferre will win out? ;) Vanished user ^talk 20:39, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Looking over the opera corpus, my 5 would be Peggy Glanville-Hicks, Ethel Smyth, Judith Weir, Thea Musgrave, and Kaija Saariaho.

I'd still like to put in a word for American opera, though, mainly because there's no coverage of Douglas Moore's operas on here, and little about Carlisle Floyd besides an article on Susannah (and, oddly, one on Willie Stark, which I don't recall being among his wildest successes). There's nothing on Jack Beeson's pieces, nor on Marvin David Levy's work. In addition, I've been meaning for a while to write up something on Giulio Gatti-Casazza's administration at the Metropolitan Opera, which will create links for operas by Deems Taylor and Howard Hanson, among others. If not for November, then maybe for December? --User:AlbertHerring ^{Io son l'orecchio e tu la bocca: parla!} 21:03, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

How about Women composers for November, American composers (+Scott Joplin to your list?) for December, or vice-versa? Vanished user ^talk 21:08, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Either sounds good to me. No Joplin, though - there's a really good article on his one surviving opera, Treemonisha, and I've never yet read anything about his lost one-act, titled A Guest of Honor, other than the fact that it existed at one point. But both of Leonard Bernstein's operas (Trouble in Tahiti and A Quiet Place) could stand some beefing up. And maybe a few articles on Thomas Pasatieri's operas... --User:AlbertHerring ^{Io son l'orecchio e tu la bocca: parla!} 21:27, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Tailleferre?????? Rushes to the toilet to be violently sick...,. Anyway, the above plans for the next couple months look good. Moreschi 21:40, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Sadly, old chap, I can't bring myself to decide between them either. Hence I will consult a pre-eminent NPOV source. Mr. 50-pence-piece says American composers in November, Women in December. Vanished user ^talk 23:07, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good to me - now what composers should be included? Douglas Moore and Carlisle Floyd for sure; there's enough material about the latter's operas online, and I think I can plug some of the holes in Moore's output. There are a couple of Gian Carlo Menotti's works missing articles, as well. Eventually I'd like to put together articles for Robert Ward's works, as well as most of Jack Beeson's operas, but I don't think those are as important.

As for the women from the opera corpus, I'd be in favor of maybe featuring six or seven, simply because a number of them (Moya Henderson, Amy Beach, Louise Talma) only composed a single opera, while others (Judith Weir and Kaija Saariaho) have written only two or three to date. So for those five you'd only come up with eight or nine articles, compared with eight or nine for Thea Musgrave alone, or six for Ethel Smyth. --User:AlbertHerring ^{Io son l'orecchio e tu la bocca: parla!} 00:38, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, what's the complete list of American opera composers up for consideration? The ones you mentioned plus William Bolcom, Samuel Barber, John Adams, Scott Joplin, and Phillip Glass? We can probably ignore the last three: They're well-covered. I find it difficult to believe Barber only wrote two operas, though. Vanished user ^talk 00:56, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Antony and Cleopatra was savaged by the critics, which caused Barber to almost completely withdraw from composition - he was deeply wounded by the barbs. I've always wished there were more, but I'm afraid that those two (and the mini-opera A Hand of Bridge) come to his whole operatic output.

I love Bolcom's work, but I'm not sure any of the operas are major enough to warrant seperate treatment just yet, although I enjoyed View. Which leaves the list, basically, at:

• Douglas Moore
• Carlisle Floyd
• Gian Carlo Menotti (a few)
• Deems Taylor
• Robert Ward
• Jack Beeson
• Howard Hanson

There's only one Robert Ward work (The Crucible) that I think really needs an article; same for Beeson (Lizzie Borden) - all of their other works can wait. There are only three substantial Menotti operas missing articles. Deems Taylor wrote three operas, two of which made a rather large noise at their premieres (Peter Ibbetson was the only American opera to open a Metropolitan season between 1884 and 1966, and it wasn't a premiere.) And Hanson only wrote one opera, but it was a big deal at the time.

Perhaps Moore, Floyd, Menotti, Deems Taylor, and Hanson? --User:AlbertHerring ^{Io son l'orecchio e tu la bocca: parla!} 01:22, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

I've set up a basic script for it. Couple things to fix with it, like archiving. Vanished user ^talk 03:29, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

How's this look? I added in all operas for all of them save Menotti (I honestly can't find a lick of information about most of his later operas anywhere, so I figured redlinking articles for them would be worthless). If there's too much, I think we can safely drop Ward and Beeson - each one's only really known for one opera.

Oh, almost forgot. The Moore opera is titled Carry Nation, not Carrie Nation - my father has his program from a 1968 performance at the New York City Opera, and I checked. And to the best of my knowledge, Floyd's Flower and Hawk is a song cycle and not an opera. --User:AlbertHerring ^{Io son l'orecchio e tu la bocca: parla!} 07:06, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

This chauvinist pig has just added two female composers to the opera corpus (Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre and Louise Bertin). So you now have nineteen to choose from for December. --Folantin 10:16, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

How about Librettists for January? Vanished user ^talk 01:09, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

I like the cut of your jib. --User:AlbertHerring ^{Io son l'orecchio e tu la bocca: parla!} 02:11, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. I think we should decide the composer of the month the month before (although I'm happy to go with the proposed decision for December). These things are dependent on people being around to do the work and it's not always possible to know that months in advance. Also, if you take away the prospect of others being able to nominate their favourite composers in the foreseeable future, they'll probably lose interest in making contributions. "Librettists" sounds overambitious to me. The problem with "Composer of the month" has usually been biting off more than we can chew. Maybe it would be a good idea to focus on a major composer who wrote only a handful of operas and try to bring those articles up to an exellent standard (e.g. Weber, Berlioz, Stravinsky - I'm just throwing out names here to give you an idea of the type of composer I mean. I don't know the current state of their WP articles very well).--Folantin 08:26, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Right. Women composers is set up - since not on e opera is done yet, I thought it best to leave it to the top five and not add others: It's probably about what we're able to do. Vanished user ^talk 08:53, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Merry Mount

Took care of this one this afternoon, and am now looking for images with which to pepper it - how's it look so far? --User:AlbertHerring ^{Io son l'orecchio e tu la bocca: parla!} 07:22, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

German opera

The main article on German opera was in serious need of a makeover. Over the last few days User:Xeinart and myself have been working on improving the page. So far, the sections on opera before Wagner have been extensively revised and Xeinart will probably deal with the Wagner section in the near future. If anyone else has a particular interest in the history of Austro-German opera, they are more than welcome to help us out. A skeleton outline of opera after Wagner is there and needs to be filled in. Also, if anyone could add some pictures, that would be great. By the way, once this page is fixed, I'll probably be moving on to other national opera articles, since many of them seem in desperate need of attention. Cheers.--Folantin 12:03, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Can you translate?

Hey, I noticed an extensive list of German pages under the can you translate pages. I'd be more than happy to translate any page from German to English or the other way around, but some guidelines would be nice, and I'll need a proof reader to keep the English sounding natural. If anybody would like to offer some guidelines for translation, or if anyone would like to offer to be a proof reader, pop up here and say hi. It's way easier to translate an article than to write one from scratch.Xeinart 03:24, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

My advice is to learn by doing. I rendered a few foreign language pages myself when I started on WP and they were full of pretty bad "translationese". So then I decided that I wouldn't try to reproduce the style of the original article too closely. This is an encyclopaedia, not a work of literature (not often, anyway). Remember, the key thing is the information in the foreign article. You've got to make sure you get that right in the English version. Then, to a lesser extent, you've got to make sure the article reads reasonably smoothly in English. It doesn't really matter if it conveys all the stylistic niceties of the original accurately. For instance, you might want to break down all those long, convoluted German sentences into several simple sentences in English if it reads better. On the other hand, it doesn't matter too much if you make a few grammatical or other errors; someone will come along and fix it sooner or later. But remember, the most important thing is making available new sources of information for English-speaking readers that would otherwise be inaccessible. So my advice would be to go ahead and try your hand at it. Cheers.--Folantin 11:18, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

I'll be happy to act as proof reader - leave a message on my Talk page when you've got something that needs looking at. Coincidentally, I'm just now working up an article on Marschner's Der Vampyr, for which I started with the .de text translated by Google(!). --GuillaumeTell 11:58, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Francesca da Rimini (Zandonai)

Since I had an old reference book here, with a synopsis, I've just created the article Francesca da Rimini (Zandonai). I'd appreciate it if others could take a look and fix it up as needed. (For example, should "Teatro Regio Ducal" redirect to some other article?) Andrew Sly 05:28, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, it was actually premiered in Turin, according to my sources, so I've changed that bit.--GuillaumeTell 09:38, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for catching that. Looks like the source I used was not too reliable. I've checked with the New Grove Dictionary, and added a quote from that to the article. Andrew Sly 18:19, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

List of roles / German gothic script

I've sort of more-or-less finished my Der Vampyr article. For the list of singers at the first performance, I've used two sources, the Oxford Dictionary of Opera, which just gives a list of surnames, and a playbill that I found here, and I've filled in the ones that seem to fit. BUT I'm not very good at reading Gothic script, so a) I'm not totally sure that I've put all the names in the right place - for example, should "Röckert" be against Davenaut or Suse or both? - and b) I'm reluctant to guess at the others. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Second, should I put "Herr" in front of the men's names and "Mad." or "Frau" for the women? I doubt if many of their first names will be easy to find.

Third, I'm fairly sure that the first singer of Emmy was Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient in her younger days (she'd have been 24), so I've put in a link. But, if she was married to Karl Devrient then, would she be designated "Mad."? I thought "Frau" meant Mrs. Or is "Frau" an abbreviation for Fraulein? Puzzled in York. --GuillaumeTell 18:17, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

P.S. I assume that the playbill is out of copyright - might it be worth adding it to the page? --GuillaumeTell 18:19, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Answers in London: Aye, och, the play bill will be out of copyright. Uploading it to Commons might be a good idea, then it can be easily used across all the WikiMedia projects. It's public domain as the a 2D reproduction of a work that is itself Public Domain, as the original artist died more than 70 years ago. Putting "Herr" and "Frau" is probably a good idea if the first names cannot be found: though Grove might have something? Anyone got Grove open in front of them? What a mess that Gothic is. And zooming doesn't seem to work very well. I'll try and decipher. As far as I'm aware "Frau" is for married status, but someone had better confirm this. Best, Moreschi 21:45, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

When the Oxford Dictionary of Opera only gives surnames it usually means that there is an article on the individual elsewhere in the book, where the full name is given. - Kleinzach 23:13, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Are you sure? That certainly is not the case for anybody in the list of singers under Der Vampyrin my 1992 edition, nor for most of those in the other lists of singers on the same page, nor even for all listed under a well-known opera (Le Nozze di Figaro) on another page, I'm afraid. --GuillaumeTell 01:46, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, yes, I have been able to find the full names, but I don't have the book here so I am not sure which edition I have. Another way is of course to google, e.g. search for 'Vampyr Devrient', which should get you the full name. - Kleinzach 11:48, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Cans of worms

1. I've had something to say about the arrangement of the List of major opera composers on its Talk page, and I plan to improve some of the more lacklustre entries (e.g. eliminating the reference to the dreaded "standard repertory" under Delibes, since the article on Lakmé states that "it is inexplicably rare for this opera to actually be performed" - which chimes with my own observations, or lack of observations). Delibes is one of the more bizarre composers in the list, and I've been worrying about the relative staus of the lists that were used, and what the biases of their authors might have been, and how long ago the lists were first produced, and how long each list is relative to the others, and suchlike. Books like Kobbé seem to me to add newly fashionable operas but don't remove those that have dropped out of fashion.... Is there a statistician in the house?

2. Surely it's only a matter of time before the List of important operas has to be dealt with in the same way as the composers - see the late Marc Shepherd's remarks at the end of the Talk page. I'll be happy to discuss/help.

3. Is anyone working on the November composers of the month? I don't know any of the red-linked operas, but could possibly have a go at Ward's Crucible if no-one else is working on it.

4. Also, is anyone planning to do anything about the December composers? I feel that if this sort of exercise is going to work, then we each need to volunteer here to do some specific opera by the end of the month.

--GuillaumeTell 19:00, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I'll do what I can for Ethel Smyth's operas. Vanished user ^talk 19:36, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Feel free to improve any of the composer entries you like. Moreschi and I did the overwhelming majority of them at breakneck speed and some of those composers obviously took our fancy more than others. Gershwin is a particularly dull effort by yours truly. Just make sure you provide solid inline references for any statements you make. Yes, there are a few oddballs there. Poulenc should be there and not Walton, in my opinion. As I say, it's not my list, it's not your list, it's the list our sources provided and there's something to displease everybody. The most important thing is every great great opera composer is there. The votes at the bottom of the page give a rough idea of genuine importance too. Seriously, I really wouldn't be very happy messing around with the list at this stage. This whole thing kicked off on September 6 and it's only just fizzling out now. You really had to be there to appreciate what I'm saying. In five years time, we'll do the whole thing again. But for now I want it to stay put even if Gustave and not Msrc-Antoine Charpentier appears there. (Yes, the other list is next in line for a fix and we'll be glad of your help). --Folantin 20:58, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Navigational boxes

I've noticed that works by Prokofiev now have their own navigational boxes (the opera template below was created, appropriately enough, by User:SergeiProkofiev, and was inserted into the articles by User:203.185.57.66). Maybe we ought to contemplate similar boxes for other prolific opera composers? I have no expertise in this area, but am willing to help if someone will take the lead.

Incidentally, the boxes (including also Prokofiev's ballets, symphonies, etc.) are in the category "Music navigational boxes", sub-category "Musician templates" - surrounded by Prince, Richard Pryor (?!?) and lots of other people, except Beethoven and Shostakovich, who didn't write classical music - whereas the existing "Opera navigational templates" sub-category is in the "Performing arts navigational boxes" category.

{{Prokofiev Operas}} --GuillaumeTell 14:53, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi. These navigational boxes are useful but I'd suggest introducing them gradually starting with well-covered major composers (i.e. those that are all blue). Kleinzach 21:53, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

How about the following? --GuillaumeTell 18:59, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Looks very good. Where will it be located? Bottom of the page or on the side? Which is the best place, I wonder? Kleinzach 21:44, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

It still needs some tweaking - operas shouldn't run onto a second line, and alpha order needs to be sacrificed to that end. The Prokofiev box is always at the bottom, but I think that the side might be good. Maybe I'll stick it into different places in one or two Mozart articles tomorrow and ask for opinions. --GuillaumeTell 22:28, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

I've rearranged it slightly and have placed it in Il re pastore, top right. Thoughts? (And I can't see why the text doesn't start further up - any ideas, anyone?) --GuillaumeTell 22:42, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

These things are tricky because of the variable line lengths, but maybe one title per line might work? - Kleinzach 17:15, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

No, I sorted that out (and replaced the previous version with what you now see above), but do look at the positioning of the box in the Il re pastore article. I've also nearly converted it into a shorter wider box for possible use below articles and will post that here today or tomorrow. --GuillaumeTell 22:50, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

I'd be inclined to use a more horizontal box:

This is less breakable by increasing font size, etc. Vanished user ^talk 11:53, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Opera project user box

Greetings to all on a brief visit (I hope to be active again next year . . . .)

The opera project user box (which seems to have been recoded with the result that most members are no longer listed) at Category:Participants in WikiProject Opera now has a template attached to the effect that "This category is being considered for renaming to Category:WikiProject Jazz participants in accordance with Wikipedia's Categories for Discussion policies."

Perhaps someone knows what is happening here?

All the best. - Kleinzach 20:25, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

That template, I think, is showing wrong info: the actual categories for discussion page shows that it is proposed that the cat be renamed to "WikiProject Opera participants". That looks much more sane. Best, Moreschi 20:30, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

I just changed Jazz to Opera. As for most members not being listed, I don't think that signing up on the Project Page automatically puts you into this category - you have to manually add yourself or grab one of the user boxes from the very bottom of the Project Page, miles from the signing-up area, and a lot of signers-up seem never to have done that, AFAICS. --GuillaumeTell 22:21, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. What happened with the user boxes was that someone changed the code with the result that the original version was de-linked to the participants page. (This happened to me and a number of others.) Not very important but perhaps it would be better to decide on one official version of the project user box? (The sign-up list of the project page is something separate . . .) - Kleinzach 16:53, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Stablepedia

Beginning cross-post.

See Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team#Stablepedia. If you wish to comment, please comment there. ★MESSEDROCKER★ 23:52, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

End cross-post. Please do not comment more in this section.

Hmm. This appears to be an attempt to create a new kind of DIY Wikpedia project within user space. - Kleinzach 20:03, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Irrelevant anyway as we have 1FA and that's virtually it as regards "stable" articles. Moreschi 20:07, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Are Don Carlos and Don Carlo separate operas?

The article now begins with this statement (by User:Jerzy):

Don Carlos and Don Carlo are two closely related late 19th-century operas by Giuseppe Verdi, in French and Italian respectively.

As I've written on the talk page, I don't think this is helpful. Treating operas written in different languages as different works (presumably needing different pages) will just cause confusion/proliferation.

Any comments? Preferably on Talk:Don Carlos. - Kleinzach 18:11, 5 December 2006 (UTC)