Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Opera/Archive 10

message: We started the Composer of the Month list to encorage new members to contribute as well as to concentrate on areas where our coverage is poor. 
I note that virtually no-one has written anything about the operas listed for this month (November), not even those who made up the list. Is this because no-one is interested or because the information is not available? Many of the works are new to me. Are they listed in Grove?
I wonder whether the list of women composers for December will generate any more interest? The Musgrave operas have short entries in Grove, and  L’amour de loin has enjoyed critical success but the others? Is anyone going to write about them?
I recommend that for January we return to a policy of featuring the most famous composers. My suggestion would be to do Rameau, Rossini or Offenbach. Any preferences or other ideas? Best - Kleinzach 16:52, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Further to my note above, I see that the Amy Beach work has been omitted from the December list, (also the statement that the operas are not listed on The opera corpus is no longer correct - they are). I would make the necessary changes myself but I can't locate the text to modify it. How does the template work now? Can anyone explain how the thing has been set up? Thanks. Kleinzach 21:26, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I agree about January's choice. we should have an achievable objective. I'd say we should either take a famous composer who wrote a lot of works (Rameau, Rossini or Offenbach are ideal examples) and try to create stubs (at the very least) for every single one of their operas, or we take a major composer who wrote only a handful of operas (e.g. Weber) and try to provide good, solid articles for each of his works. If we choose the former method, I vote for Rameau. --Folantin 22:11, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: PS: By the way, List of major opera composers is now a featured list. It only took three months of agony to get there!--Folantin 22:21, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I am happy to second Rameau for January. There are about 20 red titles and it would be good to start all or most of them as stubs - on the basis that the stubs are substantial enough to be worth reading at creation. A good model would be the Handel stubs we did before (e.g. Berenice or Faramondo). (The stubs can then be fleshed out later by people who have seen the operas and have specialist literature etc.) - Kleinzach 20:11, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: P.S. Congrats to all on the List of major opera composers. Obviously a painstaking (if not tortuous) piece of work.  - Kleinzach 20:11, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Rameau sounds good. BTW, Kleinzach, it was completely tortuous. Check out the talkpage archives and where it ended up. Cheers, Moreschi 20:16, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You all deserve medals. What kind do you want? I'll send a bulk order to the factory! - Kleinzach 20:23, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ooh, let's see. OBE's? Orders of the Garter? Knighthoods? Seriously, though, I hope I never have to tangle with such an invidious situation again. Good can come out of conflict though, - hey, we got a featured list! - but Boisseau got what he wanted by outright bullying, and that was unacceptable. Cheers, Moreschi 20:32, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

text: How about we try the other extreme with Weber for February? Vanished user talk 22:42, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I second that, and will volunteer for Euryanthe and Die drei Pintos.  Maybe if I start now they'll be ready for February. --GuillaumeTell 22:51, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with Weber for February. The three existing articles all need work as well as the unwritten ones. - Kleinzach 23:06, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Sure. Planche was one of the major influences on the early Gilbert, and recognised Gilbert as the heir to a certain fairy play genre he developed (it's more noticable in Gilbert's earlier works, mind), so it should be interesting to research. Vanished user talk 10:49, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have listed Weber in the composer of the month (February) box above as we seem to be unanimous on this. - Kleinzach 12:18, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Composers of the Month for January/February

message: I feel reasonably confident of my ability to get Smyth up to shape, but not the other composers. Anyone else working on them? Vanished user talk 22:36, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'll see what I can do for Judith Weir's works, starting with stubs for those listed. --GuillaumeTell 11:11, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: This month's composer of the month

message: I propose we start a 'Special Projects' box to go above or below the 'Composer of the Month'. 
This could list our larger, ongoing projects - for example the current revision of the List of important operas or developing good/featured articles - projects which last more than a month and are outside the scope of the monthly series. 
These 'special' projects might be set up by any group of four or five members working together, and to the extent that they were adopted 'officially' by the Opera Project might serve to protect participants from outside harassment.
I welcome comments. Please don't hesitate to shoot the whole thing down if you don't think it will work - or you think a different approach is needed!  - Kleinzach 13:16, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds like a good idea. I think we should work on overhauling our "core" pages, such as List of important operas. Quite a bit of work has already been done on the main Opera entry. Now I think the various "national opera" articles need fixing. I've produced a total revision of German opera virtually singlehanded, and Moreschi has expressed an interest in helping me fix French Opera (I have a user sandbox for the proposed revision if anyone else is interested). Others have said they would like to do something about English opera. Italian opera needs dealing with, American opera doesn't even exist, and so on and so on. --Folantin 13:29, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed with Kleinzack and Folantin. This sounds like a good idea to help people find new articles to edit and to create quality articles. I agree with Folantin about the national operas and the List of important opera composers, and I - and, I think, Kyoko as well - would like to have a good crack at Gluck's Orfeo. Go ahead, by all means! Moreschi 13:34, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreement here too. --GuillaumeTell 18:01, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Ooh, that's quite harsh, "they would like to do something about English opera. Italian opera needs dealing with, American opera doesn't even exist"! Just kidding, I understand. Yes, I would like to work on Gluck's Orfeo. As for the project, maybe you could call it "Opera Collaboration"? --Kyoko 16:14, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hajimemashite! The existing opera project template refers to collaborations so I'd prefer to see something more specific and vaguely official sounding to build in an element of protection from harassment. Any other ideas? - Kleinzach 20:27, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: "Hajimemashite"??? What on earth? My spellchecker suggests "whitewashing", but that doesn't sound right. Joking apart... "Opera Project Working Groups"? Moreschi 20:40, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Having work groups (project teams or whatever) is one way to go of course, but here we were talking about projects. What I was thinking was that we could have an overall heading of 'Opera Project Work(s) in Progress' divided into 'Lists', and prospective 'Good articles', and 'Featured articles' etc. etc. but maybe someone has a better concept? (I was assuming that Kyoko is Japanese . . .). - Kleinzach 20:49, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hajimemashite, Kyoko desu. Yoroshiku. I don't know much Japanese, because I was raised in a predominantly English-speaking household in the Montreal area (English being the strongest shared language between my parents). Anyway, how about "focus project" or "focus article"? Kleinzach spoke of harassment. Does that really happen with opera articles? --Kyoko 04:37, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Re-harassment, what I was referring to was the phenomenon of wikipedians with special non-opera related agenda (and often no interest in opera at all) becoming interested in our work.  - Kleinzach 12:24, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Thanks Adam, that makes sense to me. Shall we go with 'subprojects' and 'subgroups' as our basic terms?  - Kleinzach 12:24, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have just realized there are descendant WikiProjects  (e.g. WikiProject Gilbert and Sullivan) which might get confused with 'WikiSubprojects', so perhaps we should avoid this term? IMO 'Work in Progress' is still the most suitable general heading. Has it been vetoed? - Kleinzach 20:07, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: ...Well, drat it. Ah, well. Give me your preferred term and I'll move templates around. Vanished user talk 01:05, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I was going to suggest putting it here first before launching it . . . . but let's call it 'Work in Progress' and then throw it open for discussion. I have already added some example text. - Kleinzach 09:21, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have fixed the provisonal wording myself. - Kleinzach 12:44, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposal: 'Special Projects' box

message: I have just been looking at the first paragragh of the Opera buffa and read:
. . . Leading composers include Mozart, Rossini, and Bizet but many others made a significant contribution to the genre and provided great influence for these composers; Mozart in particular.  These include, Claudio Goffenberg, Heinz Goering and Lucio Allapenzio. The librettist Alfonso Madrigali was a close friend of Mozart and helped him to establish the opera buffa style to its full dramatic potential.  He favoured librettos with somewhat lewd and erotic texts, and was highly accomplished at integrating his favourite themes into the operas with the utmost subtlety.  For example, in Act two of Le nozze di Figaro, Mozart and Madrigali collaborated to ensure that the homosexual tendencies of the protagonist did not become obvious throughout. . . .
Is this a hoax? I couldn't find Alfonso Madrigali at all when I searched on Google. As we all know the librettist of Figaro was da Ponte. - Kleinzach 23:06, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've now deleted the passage. After checking further, I found it was written by someone using the IP 143.117.143.182 who had a history of making spurious changes to articles. In future I suppose we'll have to watch out for clever vandals as well as stupid ones. - Kleinzach 23:31, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ooh, intellectual vandalism! I'll have to add that to the collection...Moreschi 13:00, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Opera buffa]] hoax

message: To cut down on project page clutter I have started a new sub page for User and project boxes.
This includes a new user box (with a picture of the Leipzig Opera). - Kleinzach 10:04, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: New page for user and project boxes