Talk:Rescue opera

message: I have rewritten parts of this article. It's important to realize that 'rescue opera' is a term with a special history, rather than a stylistic genre. Charlton has the best part of a page in Grove explaining this and I recommend reading it.  --Kleinzach 05:18, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I recommend reading the many, many books that describe it as a genre. I'm partially reverting you, and I hope you'll do the rest of the job yourself. Next time, please consider that Charlton is not a god of music history and his word does not defeat everyone else's. Thank you. Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 05:33, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Please read Charlton. None of the composers mentioned in the article designated their works as 'rescue operas'. You can check that. Sources other than Charlton are included in the article. Also cool down, and remember WP:CIVIL. Rescue opera is complicated and such articles should edited with a level head. --Kleinzach 05:57, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I've read Charlton. Please read the many, many books that describe "rescue opera" as a genre. (Your contention that we can't describe something as a genre unless its exponents call their works that is quite clearly silly.) Next time, please consider that Charlton is not a god of music history and his word does not defeat everyone else's. Thank you. Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 06:17, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: "Exponents"? Do you mean composers? Are you suggesting that composers don't know what genre tradition their works belong to? I don't edit war so I am not reverting your changes. Future editors (since there don't seem to be any other ones here at the moment) can perhaps consider what 'genre' means, whether a non-historical one with no tradition and no stylistic unity can be called as such. --Kleinzach 07:23, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: You know, if you weren't so busy holding up David Charlston as the supreme authority on what is and is not Authentic, you might have read the cited sources which discuss the stylistic techniques and tradition of rescue opera. You might also have considered the idea that the nature of scholarship often consists of drawing connections between historical documents that were not necessarily made at the time, and that the naming of these things is probably the least significant thing about drawing that connection. You think, say, that any historian who describes The Pirates of Penzance as a Savoy opera is automatically inferior? Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 07:49, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Again WP:Civil. What cited sources "discuss the stylistic techniques and tradition of rescue opera". Please name them. --Kleinzach 08:35, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: You keep using that word "civil." I do not think it means what you think it means, and pointing out that you're treating the opinion of one scholar as completely authoritative and better than all other scholars', in complete defiance of WP:RS, is not what it means. In any case, Grout (cited) discusses at length the stylistic characteristics of the opera of this period (we could say that he's talking about a broader inter-period genre - things like Ossian, ou Les bardes aren't rescue operas - but unlike rescue opera, "1785-1815 French opera" isn't really recognized as a genre, and your contention that rescue opera has "no tradition and no stylistic unity" is quite plainly and ridiculously false), and dozens of other sources (not all cited, because there is a finite number of hours in my day) refer to the genre as a genre, speaking of its beginnings, characteristics, etc. Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 08:52, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Are there any reliable sources (other than Grove and Oxford Music) that discuss the term 'rescue opera' rather than just using the word 'genre' casually as a shorthand for a group of operas with similar themes? If there are please quote them (as I have quoted Charlton and Kennedy) so we know what their opinions are. --Kleinzach 09:07, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: What's wrong with the Oxford Dictionary of Opera? (See also Smith, quoted in the article.) I mean, you'd think it would be a good idea to look at the sources already cited before asking for more as if there weren't any. It would also be helpful if you could cite a secondary source dismissing all these scholarly texts' use of "genre"; your personal opinion is not sufficient. Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 09:17, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Problems with this term

message: Another quotation from Grove has been (partially) deleted from the article, see . 
The edit summary by Roscelese reads "no real debate about whether or not it's a genre, so contention that it isn't shouldn't be in lead". Clearly there is a controversy about this matter (as can be seen from the discussions above). Enforcing your opinion by deleting citations (as with the List of opera genres ) is not helpful to the editorial process. --Kleinzach 10:03, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Please see WP:LEAD: "notable controversies" can be included, but this isn't a particularly notable controversy, so it belongs in the body and not the lead. If you want, I'll add the text to the appropriate paragraph in the body - it's just that I wanted to include the citation of the date in the lead without dragging in a theory that belongs in the body. (Likewise, if List of opera genres had a sort of "miscellaneous information" column, I would totally support adding that some people don't think it's a genre. But in a list article with no space to discuss different opinions, it is arbitrary and possibly some sort of WP:RS violation to prioritize one scholar's opinion over all these others by excluding the genre and saying, in Wikipedia's voice, that it isn't a real genre.) Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 17:35, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Another deletion of a citation from this article