Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Opera/Archive 108

It seems to me that after these page moves there's no need for hatnotes at the top of either article (see

WP:NAMB). The only hatnote that is still required is the one at Jennifer Johnston. --GuillaumeTell

17:32, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure exactly when JJC changed her name - presumably within the last 18 months since 4m4 made the pages - presumably some people will have some memory of JJC as just JJ and deserve some guidance? almost-instinct 17:37, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

But anyone who types in Jennifer Johnson will find her at the top of the dab page. --GuillaumeTell 18:49, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Oh yes, sorry, I hadn't thought of that almost-instinct 22:24, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Any comments would be welcome, either on the peer review page or on the talkpage. Brianboulton (talk) 20:11, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi everyone. March is Women's History Month and I'm hoping a few folks here at WP:Opera will have interest in putting on events related to women's roles in opera; as performers, writers, characters, etc. We've created an event page on English Wikipedia (please translate!) and I hope you'll find the inspiration to participate. Please visit the page here:

• Apropos of Women's History Month, does anyone object to a special all-women version of the In this month feature on Portal:Opera for March 1st? You can preview it here. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 17:01, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Very nice! -- kosboot (talk) 19:49, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Category:Films about opera, which is within the scope of this WikiProject, has been nominated for merging. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:08, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Interesting discussion with a lot of messy categorization. I've added my 2 cents there.;-) Voceditenore (talk) 15:24, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

It's long closed, but I would have proposed a three-way split so that Rick (film) would be in the "based on" category while Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto Story (!) would be listed with "film versions of operas". I'm not sure if What's Opera, Doc? is really based on operas or about opera, though. Sparafucil (talk) 22:10, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

There is a new article, started by

see my note at Talk:Henri Duponchel.--Smerus (talk) 13:54, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

I came upon a pkeets article yesterday (see this diff!) - (s)he has already created 825 articles - good going ..... --GuillaumeTell 17:26, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

• Portal:Arts

I've nominated

I just created the page for this lovely, retired American tenor. The online sources for information on his career aren't very good, and I'll have to do some digging about. Help would be very much appreciated! almost-instinct 23:20, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

I fleshed out the lead, the early part of his life and education, and I put together a prose paragraph of his Met career. Much more could be written on his international appearances and performances with other US opera companies. His concert career could also use more attention. I'm not a big fan of the table archiving his Met career. Prose is preferable. 4meter4 (talk) 04:08, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Well, I am a big fan of tables having tables like that, as they contain so much information and, if one chooses to examine them, one can see the way a career opens up. But, more to the point, we now have both table and prose which is lovely and helpful for all kinds of readers. Thank you for finding all the biographical stuff; knowing nothing about him whatsoever, I was finding it difficult to know where to start.

On a personal (and thus irrelevent) level I would like to point out that tables like the one I created require a certain amount of effort, firstly in collating the information and secondly in formatting, so being faced with with "I'm not a big fan of the table archiving his Met career. Prose is preferable", as the only comment, left me somewhat crestfallen :-/ almost-instinct 19:23, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

I didn't mean to discourage you. My concerns for the table are more related to the fact that I think the table makes the article rather too one sided towards Olsen's Met career (ie.

WP:Undue Weight). It completely overshadows his work elesewhere, both with other opera houses/companies, and more importantly his career as a concert artist (which in actuality has been the bulk of his professional career). In the big scheme of things, 164 performances at the Met is a relatively small number when you consider the overall body of work in his career. I would similarlily oppose Met performance tables on most other biographical articles as the majority of performers have highly diversified careers which are not limited to performances with any one particular company. Pavarotti clocked in nearly 400 performances at the Met, but a Met performance table at his article wouldn't be appropriate either for the same reasons.4meter4 (talk

) 01:40, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

In general I see your point; in this instance it struck me as appropriate, as his time at the Met - starting with winning the Met's annual auditions - formed the backbone of his stage career. I agree that there is plenty more to be added to this page, and am confident that once it is done there won't be undue weight. When considering the low number of his performances, one should remember the extreme brevity of his stage career. To return to the more general issue of using the Met's vgd archives, the only other singer for whom I've done a table like this was Robert Merrill - given that his stage career barely existed outside the Met it seemed highly appropriate. I agree with you about Pavarotti. almost-instinct 10:59, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

The recent move of Madame Chrysanthème (and not fixing any of the incoming links) to Madame Chrysanthème (opera) was a mistake. The usurped page (Madame Chrysanthème) serves no function as it has only one linked article, the opera. If an article on Loti's novel ever should get written, it can be accommodated with a hatnote at the opera or a page Madame Chrysanthème (disambiguation) might be created. I suggest to revert the move. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 12:34, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Agree. But maybe you could ask martial arts fan User:Shawnc why (s)he made the move before getting an admin to revert. (The unnecessary dab page Madame Chrysanthème has also been incompetently set up.) --GuillaumeTell 22:23, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for pointing this out -- basically I tried to wikify a reference to the novel at

Madame Butterfly but was brought to the article about the opera instead. I've created a stub for the novel. Sorry about the incorrectly set up disambiguation page. Feel free to revert "Madame Chrysanthème (opera)" to Madame Chrysanthème, or move the latter to a proper disambiguation page. I'm not an admin so I can only perform the latter. Shawnc (talk

) 06:54, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

The page name for stub for the novel you created, Madame Chrysanthème (novel)), has an extra closing parenthesis; I suggest you move the article to Madame Chrysanthème (novel). As for the process: it would have been appropriate to consult WP:Moving a page#Usurping a page title before the move. There, a discussion before such actions is recommended and "it is strongly recommended that you modify all pages that link to the old title so they will link to the new title." There are currently four incoming links at Madame Chrysanthème that need fixing, some with more than one occurrence. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 09:59, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

I've fixed the page title for Madame Chrysanthème (novel). Bit of a mess really. I suggest moving the opera back to its old title, unless there is strong evidence that neither the opera nor the opera is primary. And if there is to be a disambig page (pretty unnecessary), then it should be Madame Chrysanthème (disambiguation). Voceditenore (talk) 10:17, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

That was my original position, too. But now we have a stub on the novel, and there were only 4 links to the disambiguation page involved (now fixed), so I think the effort with

WP:RM is not worth it. -- Michael Bednarek (talk

) 12:50, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

There seems to be an awful lot of clutter at the bottom of what should be our flagship article, notably in the See also section and the over-prominent Performing arts box, viz:

• Portal:Opera
• Performing arts
• Magic
• Puppetry
• Drama
• Tragedy
• Comedy
• Tragicomedy
• Romance
• Satire
• Epic
• Lyric
• Ballet (Why?)
• Orchestral enhancement (What?)
• WP:AfD
  , anyone?)
• etc.

Do we really need any of this? --GuillaumeTell 01:06, 5 March 2012 (UTC) (away for a few days, back on Thursday for the flak)

I generally agree about the clutter, but I suspect it's difficult to argue against the template {{

See also" section should be removed entirely. What's currently listed there should either be linked in the main article or be present in the navigation boxes, or is indeed marginal, like "Orchestral enhancement". Once the "See also" section is removed, there is no room for the template "Performing arts", so it may have to go, too. -- Michael Bednarek (talk

) 06:00, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

I'd say to just add {{

List of opera topics and could probably just be added to the Opera lists template. Orchestral enhancement, very marginal and doesn't belong. As for the ghastly pink and white {{Performing arts}}, the Performing arts article is linked in the first sentence. That article has the whole template, and that's more than enough. I'd say quietly remove it and if there's a squawk, tell them to make an alternative horizontal navbox for the bottom of the page. It's pretty standard to put the {{Portal}} template in the "see also" section. By the time we're finished, that would be the only thing there—good! ;-) Voceditenore (talk

) 11:02, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Being colorblind, I wasn't offended by the colors, but couldn't that be easily edited (by someone with better color vision than I have)? These navigational templates usually appear in every article that is in the template. (Opera appears in bold because that's how they work, right?) I would say, either we nominate the whole navigational template for deletion, or it should probably stay in the Opera article. (And it certainly doesn't seem to make sense to remove Opera from the template.) Regarding ballet, it is linked in in the section on French opera, so it doesn't need to be in the "See also". Orchestral enhancement probably badly needed links, so it was added here. (That article does mention opera in the lead. But it seems kind of like a contemporary take on something that has really been happening since Monteverdi.) Actually, I don't find this "See also" section all that objectionable overall. It's nicely organized and formatted, and possibly many readers might find it useful, and it's located out of the way (in the correct place). --Robert.Allen (talk) 11:53, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

It's only a pale pink, so could be worse, but still naff and very clunky. I personally loathe intrusive vertical navboxes when they are only tangentially of interest to readers of a particular article. They're much better as collapsed footers, but I'm not fussed either way, as long as it isn't stuck up at the top of the article. Voceditenore (talk) 12:56, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

I think your suggestion of modifying the "Performing arts" navbox template so that there is a collapsed footer option is an excellent idea. Perhaps this could be accomplished by rewriting the template with a paramater value specifying the format. Then editors could select the format depending on the specific situation. In the collapsible form it could go either at the bottom of the "See also" section (or even at the bottom of the article, altho I would much favor the "See also" section). I also noticed that the list of "List articles" could be replaced with this: