Talk:List of famous operas

Why do we need to add short descriptions when almost all of these operas have detailed descriptions on their own pages? --rmhermen

I am starting this to lots of what I call "naked lists". I'm on a crusade to make such "one-liners" a regular feature of lists in wikipedia.

• Plots of operas are damned interesting and I think a page full of them would be fun to read, and also provide nice information for people who want to make the point that it isn't just rap music that's full of lowlifes acting bad.
• If there is no accompanying article, at least there's something
• Many people won't know the difference between La Boheme and Carmen (pretty girls in trouble) and can benefit from a hint or two as to which opera is the one they're looking for.
• Lists are a great way of pulling everything together, but a long list of otherwise unidentified character strings is both uninformative and boring. Every article should have content (even disambiguation pages usually have additional reader guidance beyond the highlighted entries).
• Other people besides me agree, see List of novelists, List of battles.
• They're tons of fun to write. I'm going to carry on with this, but don't worry, I don't know much more about opera, so I'll leave this page to others to carry on and meanwhile I'll see you at List of notable actors.

Ortolan88 08:05 Jul 23, 2002 (PDT)

It is an interesting idea, indeed, but I have some (respectful) doubts about its current form. There are good reasons, effectively, to have some elements of each single work in this page too, as other good reasons might exist to respect... the religious devotion of Opera's lovers (I'm one, I confess :-). But, it seems to me that to be more coherent with the general spirit and style, these concise notes could be listed as "keywords" (like html meta), as we cannot summarize anything more in the given one line. I regret, but I can't agree on the paragon with the other lists you mentioned: it is useful, there, to have some details that include reasons for listing or details on facts. Here instead we are facing artworks (or presumed ones), which elements (characters, facts, etc) are not "technical data" like we could read in a PC advertising: HD X Mb, RAM Y Mb, Processor: *** Z Mhz and so on. The Threepenny Opera summary is quite new indeed to Opera's lovers: of course it is true, but it is also truly strange (from my point of observation, naturally).

Moreover, we all would like to invite newcomers to follow links, or to put some new content in empty ones, so (IMHO) I wouldn't give the idea that the works are already described (this way) in these lines.

What I do think is that, if we can find a way to put these concise elements in a form which could essentially mean a list of keywords, nothing more, it could be an interesting experiment to test it in this page. I'd like to help, in this case, for the little I know. -- Gianfranco

While I know nothing about opera, I do agree with Ortolan that lists should be annotated (as I wrote on his talk page, yesterday). However, I also agree with Gianfranco that the current annotations here are maybe a bit too short. Why limit yourself to one line/sentence? And even then, a short full sentence is often more useful to me than just some keywords. So I'd rather have "Famous opera by Verdi set in ancient Egypt" than "love, treachery and sphinxes" (please note that both are not meant to be a serious description...). The idea is not to bring back the opera to a few keywords, but to inform the reader of the list about why the opera is in the list anyway, and why he should go read (or edit) the article about it. Jheijmans 23:45 Jul 23, 2002 (PDT)

Change away then, but annotate. Brecht and Weill are the only opera writers who mean anything to me and I put in, in allusive form, everything that I like about their two operas (except the name Alaskawolfjoe). I personally prefer "love, treachery, elephants, and sphinxes" to "famous opera about ancient Egypt" but either one of them is vastly superior to a bare Aida; both of them identify the opera and lead readers on. The one-liners in List of battles are quite serious, compressed, and informative, while those in List of novelists are more whimsical. Both lists work for me.

I do think they should be kept short, three lines or so. The main function of the list is traffic direction. The annotations should contribute to that function, not replace real articles.

Der Mensch lebt durch den Kopf,

Sein Kopf reicht ihm nicht aus

Man lives by his head,

His head is not enough

Dreigroschenoper (Threepenny Opera)

But we stagger on,

Ortolan88 09:11 Jul 24, 2002 (PDT)

Ortolan, I think the exact contents of an annotation are subject to personal preferences, as so often. But, I think annotations certainly benefit from full sentences. So "A story of love and treachery set in ancient Egypt.", which has about the same contents as "love, treachery, Egypt" has my preference. That is actually all I wanted to say. Even better - IMO - would be "A famous opera of Verdi about love and treachery, set in ancient Egypt". But that is all my personal preference, and I leave you free to ignore it :-) Jheijmans

Directly taken from La Tosca article:

the story of a painter and his woman, a famous singer, who die because they have helped a breacher political prisoner (that later will suicide) to escape; the woman attempts a corruption of the chief policeman, who defrauds her and by her is killed, but will have his revenge after his death.

This could be a fair description of the work (I wouldn't say less), but it does not mention any carachter, so it perhaps should be:

the story of a painter (Mario Cavaradossi) and his woman (Floria Tosca), a famous singer, who die because they have helped a breacher political prisoner (Angelotti, that later will suicide) to escape; the woman attempts a corruption of the chief policeman (Scarpia), who defrauds her and by her is killed, but will have his revenge after his death.

A good reason to have characters here could be that someone might be looking for a work of which he remembers the roles (perhaps because of a famous aria) but not the title.

I don't think that personal preferences might produce very different results in summarising these works this way: their content does not seem controversially readable.

I'm only afraid that for some works this kind of description could be longer than the article it links to (I think that, currently, most Melitz's plot summaries recall by now the famous "1911" style, so I'm only talking about the introductory notes of each article).

The following consideration is aboout carachters: ought we to list them all, work by work? -- Gianfranco

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I would say that for the list page, whatever is most memorable or notable about the opera would be the best thing to mention, which is why I mentioned "cigarette girl" and "March of the Toreadors" under Carmen and "Mack the Knife" under Dreigroschenoper.

I agree that a brief summary from the article itself is an excellent way to supply these brief descriptions. A well written article will almost automatically contain something like that. If the article doesn't have one, maybe it should be added to the article and then quoted here in the "list of famous operas" article.

If a character in an opera is the most notable thing (again, I don't know much about operas) then that would be appropriate for the list, but otherwise, it would probably be best to put discussion of the characters in the discussion of the individual operas. It would be a rare opera character who would deserve an article on their own. I can't think of one off the top of my head. Well, "Mack the Knife", I guess, but he's famous from the hit parade, not the opera.

As a matter of writing style, bulleted lists are unusual in that they can consist of anything from a single word to several paragraphs, although all on one page or screen is a pretty good limit. In tech writing, the things we are talking about are called "one-liners", although they can be from one to a few lines in length. It is probably a matter of individual taste whether it is better to say, "The opera tells the story of a consumptive prostitute" or simply to say "consumptive prostitute". The briefer style suits me, but I don't want to discourage anyone from annotating these lists and if you opera folks agree that sentences are preferable, I'll change them, or you can. Ortolan88 08:57 Jul 25, 2002 (PDT)

Theatre people consider the Brecht-Weill works as plays, and thus the writer Brecht is the big name and the composer Weill of less importance. When they are considered operas, as in this article, I do believe they should be sorted under the composer. The other librettists are not mentioned, why should Brecht be here? Habj 16:42 17 May 2003 (UTC)

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Old page at Talk:Famous Operas moved to Talk:List of famous operas/from Talk:Famous Operas. -- Timwi 18:39 18 Jun 2003 (UTC)