User talk:Marleau

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[edit] Thanks for your opera singer articles!

Hi, and welcome to Wikipedia. You've been doing some great work creating articles about French opera singers and filling out others. Just a couple of things to watch out for... Make sure that opera titles are in italics, e.g. Don Pasquale not Don Pasquale. Also, the standard format for opera titles on Wikipedia uses the Grove system which for French and Italian operas captializes only the first word + proper nouns, e.g. Il barbiere di Siviglia. Another thing to watch out for is that when you link an opera, you don't link by mistake to a disambiguation page or to another work by the same name. For example, Verdi's opera Falstaff should be linked like this: [[Falstaff (opera)|Falstaff]] not simply [[Falstaff]]. Otherwise, the reader gets taken to Shakespeare's character, Falstaff. There are a lot of helpful guidelines on the Wikipedia Opera Project page and you can always bring queries etc. the project's Talk Page. All the best. Voceditenore (talk) 07:37, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi from me as well. However I wonder if we can ask you not to change the capitalization of opera titles? I see you have just been working on Ferruccio Tagliavini and unfortunately I am going to have to do some corrections. The capitalization we use is explained on the Opera Project here. Best. -- Kleinzach (talk) 00:50, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for your message. You are doing a great job and have started some really good articles. I was particularly delighted to see the Vanni-Marcoux! Please don't be discouraged by our corrections - that's the way WP works. We'd be delighted if you liked to join the Opera Project. You can sign on here. You may also like to participate in our regular 'Singer of the Month' activity. You can also find information about editing styles etc. on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Opera page. Good luck. -- Kleinzach (talk) 03:40, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Thankyou for your work on these opera singers but can you please avoid POV sentences which you seem to use near the end of your articles. "Barrientos was not only a fabulous singer, her voice was of almost instrumental limpidity, but also a beautiful woman". This is way too POV for this encyclopedia. ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ $1,000,000? 18:52, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Welcome

Project logo

Welcome to the Opera Project!

Hello, Marleau! We're delighted you've signed up to join us!

Opera is a very active, medium-sized project with more than 4,400 articles - it's smaller than the mega-projects like Music etc, but it is also larger than closely-focused projects such as Richard Wagner.

We have a discussion page linked to the main project page where you signed in. Participants work together on articles, see for example the Composer of the month, Singer of the month and Can you help? features on the Project page. Please take part!

The scope of the project is huge: 400 years of history, many countries and many languages. For that reason the editing style of opera articles can sometimes be complicated, so we have detailed guidelines for formatting on the project page, covering the tricky points like opera titles, capitalization, categories etc. Please don't be too bothered if you make a few mistakes at first - we all went through the same thing when we started!

Some opera editors use reference books such the New Grove Dictionary of Opera, New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, the Oxford Dictionary of Opera and the Viking Opera Guide. These are helpful for checking facts and providing the essential references required on Wikipedia. It's great if you can get access to these books.

However if you don't have access to books, there are still many other ways you can contribute to the project: compiling lists of recordings, writing synopses of your favourite operas using CD librettos, translating texts from other languages, picture researching, writing biographies of contemporary singers from online sources etc etc - and see also the To do list for articles needing attention.

We hope you have a great time on the Opera Project.
Please don't hesitate to ask us if you have any questions! We are always here - here!
Best regards!

Kleinzach (talk) 02:25, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Antonio Cotogni

Dear Marleau, like all the above, I am very pleased to see what you have been doing and wish you a warm welcome. It is really encouraging to have fresh enthusiasm in this field. I have just tidied up Cotogni slightly. Please permit me to agree with other editors above, that it is best to avoid the subjective descriptions of the qualities of singers based on one's hearing of them (live or on record), unless of course one can cite a published reference for what one is saying. I notice an addition of this kind in the Heinrich Schlusnus article. It's not that I don't agree with the description, the problem is getting a proper reference for comments like that - and references there have to be! One other point - with articles such as Cotogni, where you are drawing from just one published source, it is (I find) very helpful if the writer of the first short article or stub states, maybe in a footnote or whatever, that the content of what is written is, really, all drawn from that one source. Then anyone adding some more information (as I may well do to Cotogni) can make sure that their additional references fit in with yours. I'm afraid that's as clear as mud! Anyway, have fun with it and see you about here, no doubt. Best wishes and a warm welcome, Eebahgum (talk) 02:22, 14 March 2008 (UTC) PS Ideally an article in WP should have at least 2 sources, but sometimes it takes a while to achieve that!Eebahgum (talk) 02:25, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Hi! Thanks for the message. Sorry to accuse you wrongly of those edits!!!
What I mean is this: For instance, suppose I write an article about Nellie Melba and I cite the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Opera as my source, and then you add some more information which you take from Kobbe's Complete Opera Book, and both of us just list our source-book at the bottom of the page, no-one will know which information comes from which source. So the more people add to the article, the less possible it is to verify where the information comes from. Therefore if we KNOW from the outset that everything in a short article comes from the source mentioned (i.e. nothing in the article is opinion, or is derived from anywhere else) then the next editor who comes along can just put footnotes to what he/she adds, for their source, and everyone can see where the information comes from.

And, if you start off an article and give two sources (like your article on Dino Borgioli), then if you don't say which information is from which book, then no-one can ever unscramble which information came from where. So it helps if you can use inline references as much as possible. If you don't know how to format the footnotes (so that they pop up in the right place, with the numbers etc) I can explain (please ask), it's very easy and most simple to do it as you go along. It is also quite satisfying! An example of a very heavily footnoted singer article is the one on Charles Santley (but I am not suggesting that as a model).

You might say, why put so many references to the same source? The answer is, Because people need to know exactly what the authority for the statements is, if the wikipedia is to be really useful to others, rather than just a pleasant read. It is also the best way to prevent people from deleting things that you have written, because once it is referenced they have to justify why it should not be there, but if it isn't, people can just cross it out and say 'not relevant', and the person who is deleting in that way usually has the advantage when it comes to a dispute, it appears. I hope this is some help, if not please chat or visit my page if you want. very best wishes, Eebahgum (talk) 15:28, 14 March 2008 (UTC)


[edit] Aida, Un ballo in maschera, Madama Butterfly, Rigoletto, Norma, Luisa Miller, Lucia di Lammermoor

All the recordings in the above articles have been restored to the original. I understand you want to add some roles in Aida, Un ballo in maschera, Madama Butterfly, Rigoletto, Norma (opera), Luisa Miller, Lucia di Lammermoor recordings, but, please do not delete the existing recordings just because you dont have the details about the roles you added. Secondly, after your "editing", the columns and rows are not aligned and in some articles, you deleted the whole frame. Not only that, you even deleted the ASIN/CAT in most of the articles. I have restored all the recordings to the previous, which means, your newly added entries have been removed. If you like to add your entries, please do not delete ASIN/CAT, other recordings, the frame and please re-adjust the format. Thanks. - Jay (talk) 14:30, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I was about to respond to your message with much the same comment as Jay's above. There is no reason to remove a listing just because it is incomplete. In many cases, when I have set up the boxes, I've put a ? on the missing line in the hope that people will come along after me and eventually fill in the details. Viva-Verdi (talk) 15:35, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Singer articles/banner and categories

Thanks for all your work on 20th century singers. You are really prolific! (Have you thought of listing your new articles on your user page?)

This is to make two requests:

1. Can you put the opera project banner on the Talk pages? The code is {{opera}} - unless it's a stub in which case it's {{opera|class=stub}}.

2. From now on can you put the singers in the following two categories?

A, the nationality cat, for example Category:French opera singers

and

B. One of the following voice cats:

Category:Operatic sopranos • Category:Operatic mezzo-sopranos • Category:Operatic contraltos • Category:Operatic countertenors • Category:Operatic tenors • Category:Operatic baritones • Category:Operatic bass-baritones • Category:Operatic basses

(The last cat. is a new requirement.) Thanks very much for your help. Best. --Kleinzach (talk) 03:31, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply! There are still lots of anomalies in the categories which will take a lot of time to correct but the cats above should be the basis.
The selection of singers you've worked on have filled important gaps - I've been delighted by your choice! I don't know if you've seen The Record of Singing? Many of your singers are listed there.
Yes please removes the stubs (on the banner as well as the article) when the article is substantial. There's some information about this here but you can judge easily enough by other articles. Keep up the good work. Best. --Kleinzach (talk) 22:36, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
Just a note to say that I have put opera banners on all your existing articles. Great collection of pages! Best --Kleinzach (talk) 23:41, 1 April 2008 (UTC)


[edit] 'Can you help?' List/The Record of Singing

I forgot to mention we have a special 'Can you help?' list of red-linked singers. It's at the top of the Opera Project page (purple box). There are also many red links on The Record of Singing article. Best. Keep up all the great work!--Kleinzach (talk) 03:45, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Luigi Piazza and Tino Folgar

I've had a look at the 'history' and in both cases I think these were bona fide edits. Once someone knows that you are working in a field of interest they can check your contributions to see your new articles. Keep up the good work! --Kleinzach (talk) 22:59, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Luigi Piazza is not in Vol 3 of The Record of Singing

Hi. I've just seen you added Luigi Piazza to The Record of Singing - but he's not in that collection! Can you possibly check before you make any changes to that list? Thank you. --Kleinzach (talk) 07:52, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Nor was Jean Borthayre in the collection! And you deleted Jean Planel! I can't understand why. --Kleinzach (talk) 07:59, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
It's a list of recordings that were published by EMI/Testament. It was their choice and sometimes they picked obscure singers if they had a good recording available. Best. --Kleinzach (talk) 12:15, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Italo Tajo

Hi. This article is very welcome, but it did need a lot of tidying-up. I realise that your first language isn't English, and I'm happy to copy-edit when necessary, as well as adding in other information.

My main problem was the number of links that you made to disambiguation pages rather than to the intended target page. The first example that I came across was when you referred (in the context of Wozzeck) to "Berg". Click Berg and you'll see that you were pointing to a page which listed zillions of places with that name and a few other links including one to Berg (surname), where, at last, there's a link to Alban Berg, the article to which you should have linked in the first place.

Here's a practical suggestion: when you've drafted your article (or edit), you should click the "Show preview" button below the editing box. That will a) show you what your article looks like, and means that you can correct typos, etc., before clicking "Save page", but also b) show what links you've made. If you'd done this and clicked "Berg", you'd have discovered that the link didn't get to where you wanted it to, and you could have re-edited that bit (and all the other dab bits) before saving. You can edit and click the Show Preview button as often as you like until you're satisfied. It's also often useful to have Wikipedia open in another window for checking if you don't like drilling down from your draft and then going back to it.

I hope that makes sense. We all make mistakes, but if you could do a bit more checking, then others like me won't have to spend a lot of time doing it for you. Best. --GuillaumeTell (talk) 21:22, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, as you saw, it wasn't too much for me, and there are still some more improvements that could be made, such as links for Lualdi, Malipiero, Nono, and Tosatti (and adding Bucchi). All I'm saying is: suppose someone finds your interesting article and wants to know more? What happens when they click links that you put in like Berg or South Pacific, or Broadway, or Manon Lescaut? They will get quite frustrated. As my old granny used to say, "If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing well". Best. --GuillaumeTell (talk) 14:44, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Felia Litvinne: a question about the accent

It's on the talk page. Best. --Kleinzach (talk) 05:59, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

My "Guide de l'opéra" list her without the accent, and it is also listed without the accent in the article Fonotipia Records and Germaine Lubin, so I redirected it so it could be link and found under both spelling. Is that OK or is it yet another NO-NO ! Marleau (talk) 12:57, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
It's not a NO-NO at all, but as you know people often drop these accents. I've checked and not only Grove but also Marston (who have released all her recordings) and other sites give the accent. She studied and made her debut in Paris so I guess she got used to using the accent. Anyway I've moved it back. The no-accent title is now a redirect. Best. --Kleinzach (talk) 01:39, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

My instinct was that the accent was correct but I was more concerned about people finding her. I found another one you might want to fix, Margarete Klose is listed in The Record of Singing in red, meaning she has no article, but she has one, however her first name shows as Margarethe. Grove and my own sources all say Margarete. Best. Marleau (talk) 02:00, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

With redirects these articles should always be findable. Thanks for telling me about Margarete Klose. That seems to have been just a mistake - the German wiki also has Margarete. I'd be grateful if you could let me know if you find any more like this! Best. --Kleinzach (talk) 02:43, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Note: Banner code now changed

For bot reasons, the banner code is now {{WikiProject Opera}} instead of {{Opera}}. Best. --Kleinzach 01:01, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Nominal assessments

Hi. This is to let you know we are now doing nominal assessments for all opera articles. You will see that I've done some for your latest articles. Can you either put stub or start on the banners in future? If the article is a stub, it needs to be marked on both the article and the talk page. Start is only marked on the talk. (At some point in the future real assessments will begin which will be noted on special comments pages.) Hope that's all OK. Let me know if you have any questions. Best. --Kleinzach 01:53, 2 June 2008 (UTC)