Talk:List of famous operas/from Talk:Famous Operas

I think we should have a consensus or naming the operas either by their most usual english translation, or their original name. Right now we have a mixture of both. AstroNomer

In Europe they are mostly known by their original name, and opera eminently speaks italian. What about a double list?

• My personal inclination would be the format Original name (English translation). But I've been hesitant to institute that, given all the comments on how this is an English language encyclopedia. It wouldn't be difficult to institute - just put redirects on whatever are considered the "alternate" names. -- April

Yes, this is an english language encyclopedia, but it is on the Net, where I find it very hard to imagine that one would be able to retrieve any useful information on Carmen's "L'amour est un oiseau rebelle" (just to keep near NPOV, and not pro-italian only) if looking for it as "Love is a rebel bird", or whatever it is translated to. Arias in particular should (more than titles) have their original score language, or it would be difficult to identify them. You wouldn't expect "Summertime" being classified abroad the way it could be locally translated to.

So I completely agree with your suggestion (and hope I can help if needed). :-)

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Couple of questions for consideration: should operettas go on this page? Separate page? Under operetta? I refuse to leave out Gilbert and Sullivan, darn it. Also, how should we handle the distinction between opera, operetta, and musical? -- April

Well, I think operetta might better be kept apart; there are not only academic or theoretical distinctions, but technical differences too. And this is more evident for "musical", which includes other artistic genres too, like ballet and a notable relationship with cinema.

This however could make things more complicated: "classical" partition starts from composers, practically depending on relevance of their work in single fields. But this way you would have Gershwin listed only as a "musical" composer, or perhaps as a jazz standards producer, which is not, or not only.

Therefore we should refer to single works and have them listed in their own genre, if they might belong to only one.

I believe that the risk of dubbing informations could eventually be less painful than omitting important ones.