Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Opera/Archive 88

I also want to extract something from the above for serious discussion.

'So, there are Soviet-era

• Cynthia Parker
• Ethel Smyth (1858–1944): Der Wald
• Nicola LeFanu (1947– ): Blood Wedding, The Story of Mary O'Neill, Light Passing
• Peggy Glanville-Hicks (1912–1990): Nausicaa, The Transposed Heads

OR

Composers of operas based on Greek mythology

• Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre (1665–1729): Céphale et Procris (based on Cephalus and Procris)
• Niccolò Jommelli (1714–1774): Ifigenia in Tauride (based on Iphigenia)
• Giovanni Pacini (1796–1867): Medea (based on Medea)
• August Bungert (1845–1915): Die Odyssee (tetrology, based on Homer's Odyssey)
• Pierre Schaeffer (1910–1995): Orphée 53 (based on Orpheus)
• Alexander Goehr (1932– ): Arianna (based on Ariadne)

- Voceditenore (talk) 16:02, 27 Sep 2009 (UTC)

You could add

Folantin (talk

) 12:38, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

A question about this has been placed on Talk:La Basoche page, which may be of interest to the Opera Project. Cg2p0B0u8m (talk) 11:31, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

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It might be worth also posting the above to Wikipedia Talk:WikiProject_Richard_Wagner. --GuillaumeTell 00:46, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I didn't realize there was a Wagner project. I left a note there.

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) 18:31, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Since the operas of the month are Monteverdi operas, might I suggest the following singers (all with articles in Grove) to be added from those operas:

• Note: I'm moving this down here for more prominence and because it's related to the above discussion on categories. – Voceditenore (talk) 22:40, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

This one seems to have slipped through the net, i.e. it hasn't been discussed here, AFAIK. There's no particular harm in it, but is it useful to anyone? Also, what about operas that are set in more than one country or in no country? Candide, L'Africaine, Manon Lescaut, Billy Budd, et al... --GuillaumeTell 21:12, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Addendum - I see that this has been discussed already - see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Opera/Archive_83 - but without any resolution one way or the other. I notice a bit of redundancy too - Macbeth (opera) appears under both Scotland and the British Isles (and doesn't Act 4 Scene 1 take place in England?). --GuillaumeTell 21:20, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

My own view on this is that it's reasonably harmless, and may conceivably be of use to people But the problem is many of these "setting" cats are ill-thought out and/or misleading. In those cases, I remove them. For example I just removed Category:Operas set in the Low Countries from Jaguarita l'Indienne. It's set in Dutch Guyana which is in South America. The category allegedly includes the colonies of the low countries, which makes it next to useless. The Dutch had colonies in North and South America, Africa, and Asia. The setting cats are also sometimes applied without any real understanding of what the opera is actually about or only a cursory reading of the article. Voceditenore (talk) 23:06, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, there are all sorts of problems associated with this sort of categorisation by country or region. We risk getting involved in all kinds of national and ethnic disputes. There's also the problem of anachronism (is Dido and Aeneas an "Opera set in Tunisia", for example?). So we should probably limit these categories to only the most obvious, indisputable examples if we are going to have them.--

Folantin (talk

) 11:17, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

I wonder of how much value a categorisation scheme Category:Operas by setting might be to a reader (other than as a curio). I suspect many arguments listed in Wikipedia:Overcategorization apply. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 11:36, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

That was what led me to set up Category:Operas set in Andorra. I was curious to see it would provoke any reaction (it didn't). But useless as it is, it is as justified as any of the others.--Smerus (talk) 19:21, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

I hope that you'll forgive my intruding a special case under this heading in preference to starting a new one. For whatever silly reason, I've been adding tags for "Category: Operas set in the United States," which carries an "underpopulated" flag, to various candidates that were missing. Mostly as a result, the total has risen from 20-odd to 46. Dunno whether that is enough to justify removing the flag from the category's page, and even if it is, I'm not comfortable doing so when I've been involved in the expansion, so I thought I'd raise the issue here in hopes that someone more knowledgeable might address it. A related question: the article for Britten's Paul Bunyan is titled Paul Bunyan (operetta) but carries category tags for operas. On the strength of the latter, I included it in "Operas set in the United States"; if that decision was off base, would somebody please fix it? Thanks! --Drhoehl (talk) 21:23, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

First, good of you to raise this here. As you can discern, most of the regulars here are not exactly enthusiastic about the "Operas set in ..." category, but on the other hand we wouldn't at all want to discourage you from populating categories in which you're interested. 46 seems to me to be quite enough to justify removing the flag, whether or not you were the populator (if that's a word). As for Paul Bunyan, it was called an operetta by either Auden or Britten or both, which is why that epithet was used. However, although some works (say, Siegfried) are obviously operas and others (say, The Merry Widow) are obviously operettas, there is a grey area, and many opera companies also stage operettas. It therefore seemed safest to regard operetta as a sub-genre of opera - you'll see that PB is also in the category "operettas", so that we don't need to worry about where the dividing-line, if there is one, is. Hope this helps. --GuillaumeTell 22:00, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it helps greatly, for which many thanks. I'm not sure quite what got into me; usually, I prefer to work on article text and pay little attention to categories, as I find the universe they occupy to be an impenetrable morass. (Tip of the hat to the opera project: the outline on the project page is the best guidance I've seen on the subject.) I guess I was overcome with some altruistic sense that when a category exists, we have a duty to our users to make its listing as complete as we can. Or maybe I was just ready for some mindless fun? Anyhow, I appreciate your gracious and comprehensive answer, quickly offered! --Drhoehl (talk) 23:32, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Anyone interested might like to look at the discussion at Talk:Oedipus rex (opera). FWIW, there is only one other title in Category:Latin-language operas, and Opera Grove goes for Oedipus rex. --GuillaumeTell 20:20, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

I spotted today that

Update: Has now been moved by

Teatro Regio di Parma, i.e. Teatro Regio (Parma) - Voceditenore (talk

) 18:14, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

This makes sense to me. Viva-Verdi (talk) 20:36, 7 October 2009 (UTC)