Talk:Renard (Stravinsky)

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[edit] Renard (opera) title

I have changed the title back to Renard (opera) rather than Renard (theatre) as per our usual style at the Opera Project. I trust that is clear and acceptable to all. - Kleinzach 18:12, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Clear, but not acceptable. Neither the technique used (cut and paste move), and even less the taking of ownership of this page by the Opera project. It is as correct to call it a ballet. The Ballets Russes premiering Renard was not an "opera company", it was a ballet company. I move back to (theatre) disambiguator, an other disambiguator would be (music), or even (Stravinsky), or have the full title (that is including its subtitle). Full title is however not such a workable solution in this case I suppose, while the (original) Russian full title differs considerably from the (usual) French full title, neither of them having a standard English translation apparently. --Francis Schonken 18:56, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Oh dear. We didn't take ownership of the page. We took responsibility. Not the same thing at all. I didn't know that anyone regarded the genre of this piece as controversial. Your idea that it was first performed by ballet dancers, not singers, is new to me. My information (from the article by Richard Taruskin in the New Grove Dictionary of Opera, the leading source of its kind in English) is that there were two basses and two tenors. Where does your information come from?

Perhaps you should have explained your point of view in the first place (as I had the courtesy of doing above) instead acting arbitrarily? Is your argument that Renard is a ballet and not an opera? In that case why didn't you name it as Renard (ballet)? The use of (theatre) is hardly a disambiguator. It introduces an ambiguity by appearing to point to a spoken drama rather than a musical entertainment. Did you consider this, I wonder? - Kleinzach 20:19, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

I did explain my reasons, [1] – apparently you did the cut-n-paste move without even checking edit history? Nor were you aware, apparently, that you could've moved it back keeping its edit history intact (no longer possible, because you performed a second edit on the page where I moved it from).

Note that Renard was linked from the Ballets Russes page as Renard (ballet) for quite some time, I never thought it would be described as "opera", oh dear. Stravinsky page notes it as both currently.

Still another thing, re. your cut-n-paste move: please clean up double redirects after a page move. That's the least you can do. You would've seen then that there *was* a link Renard (ballet) you made inoperable by not repairing the double redirect.

Personally I'd agree with Renard (Stravinsky) as a page name too. I think that would also conform with wikipedia:naming conventions (pieces of music), even if it deviates somewhat from the operatic NC. If we can't get out of this now (I mean, there's also no hurry really), I'd propose to conduct a WP:RM. But in that case, please follow procedure, it's all neatly explained on that page.

Note that for public performances of the piece, at least for the early public performances, it were the ballet companies & choreographers that got the credit. I didn't even ever see the names of the singers of the early productions of the piece. As if in those days the Parisian public would even have understood what they sang. Which didn't worry Stravinsky, he wrote Oedipus Rex in Latin didn't he (an opera-oratorio cross-over composed by Stravinsky a few years later)? Note that genuinly I'd range Stravinsky's Renard under cross-over artistic endeavours, like Berlioz' Roméo et Juliette, which is only "formally" classified a symphony, while it could be an opera as well.Or Orff's Carmina Burana, usually treated as some sort of cantata, while the composer described in the score it should be "scenic". But maybe some other Parisian projects from the time when Stravinsky lived there are still better examples of such cross-over pieces, e.g. Satie's Mercure (Ballet/Tableau Vivant cross-over), and the Relâche/Entr'acte production which pretty much crossed over anything that could be crossed over, even the arch-enemies surrealism and dada. --Francis Schonken 21:52, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

I expected to see major changes note on the Talk page. I don’t have time to do a lot of detective work. (I would never have imagined there was a Renard (ballet) page.) Anyway I don’t want to have a silly demarcation dispute about this. Renard (Stravinsky) would be fine. We do have this form of title (usually for cases where there are multiple operas all with the same title).

I am puzzled by your examples. L'histoire du soldat appears to be a unique title so no problem there (not that I would call it an opera - there is no singing!), but Roméo et Juliette is an opera by Gounod. Are you confusing it with the Berlioz? Carmina Burana is no opera and no problem as far as I know. Ditto Satie.

In The opera corpus we have about 1250 titles. We are not looking for extra ones! - Kleinzach 22:59, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Anyway, I was wrong about my nasty Roméo et Juliette remark (confusing Berlioz' dramatic symphony and Gounod's opera), so I removed the footnote. Sorry about that. I meant that indeed it would be possible in the article to describe such pieces one way or another (exclusively "ballet", or "exclusively" melodrama for example for Satie's Le Piège de Méduse), irrespective of article naming issues. But as all that was included in my unjustified remark, I've said enough on this.

Re. "I don’t have time to do a lot of detective work.", well none of us have, but we do such things don't we? If you have time to do the move (which *should* involve making time for the double redirects issue, and which costs *less time* when using the move button, instead of cut-n-pasting), you could as well have made time to check why it was moved here in the first place, it would have saved you to do the effort of the move too.

Anyway, Renard (Stravinsky) would settle it then? I'll perform the move. --Francis Schonken 23:16, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Good. That's resolved then. For the future - please use the Talk pages. That way anomalies (like this one) can easily be dealt with and not lead to misunderstandings. - Kleinzach 07:36, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

As I'm sure that you're both exhausted after all the above, this is just a note to say that I've altered the link from the Renard (disambiguation) page so that it no longer points to Renard (theatre), and I've also altered all the double redirects at Winnaretta Singer, Igor Stravinsky, Ballets Russes, Reynard ... and indeed Renard (Stravinsky). --GuillaumeTell 16:08, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for that! - Kleinzach 17:51, 4 May 2006 (UTC)