Talk:L'incoronazione di Poppea

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Editions

User:Laser brain has twice removed a 2017 Barenreiter edition by Hendrik Schulze as lacking "high-quality reliable sources", presumably in addition to publisher & date. I doubt many performers will want to ignore it though. Sparafucil (talk) 21:18, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Correct, a link to a commercial store is sufficient for verification that it exists but it is not sufficient to indicate why it's worthy of mention. I believe someone else added additional sourcing. --Laser brain (talk) 21:22, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Infobox 2020

Re this revert: in 2014, Brianboulton added an infobox to this article, with minimal information ("identibox"). Back then, when infobox opera was new and debated, that was a bold step forward. Today, with the concise infobox being project opera's established feature, present in FAs such as Carmen, The Bartered Bride, L'Orfeo, (all by the same author), I see no reason not to have it for this article, planned to be part of a featured project. I believe that Brian would not have objected to listing the librettist, the language, the base for the text, and the premiere information. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:54, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Please don't try to double guess what Brian would or would not have said: it is extremely distasteful for you to try and use his name in this manner. - SchroCat (talk) 14:58, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

I concur with SchroCat. I think it is much better as BB had it, and would vote for its retention without accretions. I too think it rather distasteful of G. Arendt to tell us what BB would have thought: he left no suggestion that he contemplated adding all the extra stuff G. Arendt tried to slip in just now, and indeed he did not do so, wisely, in my view. Tim riley talk 15:03, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

(ec twice) The addition was not by me (I would not have touched it), but added by Aza24, in good faith. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:05, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

So this is not by you? - SchroCat (talk) 15:27, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Let's look at the actual additions:

|native_name_lang=it

without |native_name= this is redundant, but also does nothing.

|librettist=Giovanni Francesco Busenello

The article states that Busenello is the librettist. Is that not so? Is this in dispute? What is the objection to including this particular fact?

|language=Italian

I would have linked this, as [[Italian language|Italian]], but is the libretto not in Italian? What is the objection to including this particular fact?

|based_on=Life of Poppaea Sabina

This is what the article says. Is it not so? What is the objection to including this particular fact?

|premiere_date=1643 Carnival season

Should be marked up as {{Start date|1643}}, but is this wrong? What is the objection to including this particular fact?

|premiere_location=Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo, Venice

Again, this is supported by the article text. What is the objection to including this particular fact?

Finally, Gerda also made "National Roman Museum" in the image caption into a link. Why is this objectionable?

I look forward to understanding why each of these specific facts are not individually and separately deemed relevant for inclusion in the infobox. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:43, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

If you can assemble a consensus for a change, it will naturally be respected by all. Tim riley talk 15:47, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Would you care to answer my questions? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:50, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

They are straw men, a pointless discussion: as there is no consensus to change the long-standing status quo, it's a bit cart-before-the-horse to discuss the provisional factoids for inclusion. You may as well ask if Liverpool are Premier League champions: it's a valid question somewhere, and has some veracity to it, but it doesn't make a tiny difference as to whether there should be an IB on this page or not. The starting point is whether an IB should be included in the first place, not 20 questions on the first performance - SchroCat (talk) 15:54, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

To Pigs's last question: Not in the least. Turning your assumptions into questions is a familiar rhetorical device, but no reply seems called for. But let us see if other people agree with you. Tim riley talk 15:57, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

As Andy I am sure may recall, the institution of infoboxes in an article requires discussion on the talk page. I am not aware that any such discussions took place here. Communion with the deceased, however greatly their work while living is prized (and few admire the legacy of Brianboulton more than I), is not a substitute for this.Smerus (talk) 16:02, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

I recall - as the evidence, some of it just a few lines above Smerus's comment, confirms - that the institution of an infoboxes in this article was discused on this talk page in 2014; and that as a result of that discussion an infobox has been on the article ever since. HTH. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:52, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

---

@Smerus, Tim riley, Pigsonthewing, Gerda Arendt, Nikkimaria, and SchroCat: Please take a moment to read this and vote below.

I refuse to take a side on this asinine argument. You know, I came to Wikipedia after hearing the Solti's recording of the first act of Die Walküre, after being brought to tears by its power and emotion. Other composers had moved me in similar ways, but nothing like this, so naturally I wanted to learn more about Wagner. What I discovered was far more than I expected, a vast variety of impressive, informative and enjoyable articles. I thought to myself 'who spends all their time writing these?' and discovered all of you, tireless contributors. In a world of constant suffering and strife, it was nice to find a refuge or people dedicated to accessible and thorough information. However, when I stumbled across these endless fights over infoboxes, I immediately lost all respect for these people who do such amazing work. I don't care how "delicate" or "sensitive" of an issue it is, all I saw and still see was both side continuously being uncivil with the "pro-infobox" individuals consistently baiting and inciting conflict and the "anti-infox" people bullying the other side into submission. Whatever, I thought if I stuck around I would find humaness in this chaos, and I did. I had interactions with many people in this conflict and was surprised to see how helpful and patient they are, completely contradictory how they acted on these matters. And then I saw this thing called "featured topics" and immediately recognized the fabulous work of Brian Boulton on Monteverdi's Operas as a possible candidate, so worked with Gerda Arendt to create a list to tie them all together. I then went through the criteria and the articles and tried to line them up better, slightly changing headings between articles or slightly altering the links. I discovered the half of the articles were referenced differently than the other half, and the half that did not use the "sfn" templates were fairly disorganized, having years for half the authors and not the other half – so I went through the articles and made them all sfn while fixing the refs. I then saw under the "recommendations" of the criteria there was "The articles use a common infobox where appropriate." Every Monteverdi Opera article used a similar box except Poppea, and after reading through the talk page where I saw that the current one was part of a trial from 7 years ago that only one person commented on, I assumed the trial was over and the article should be adjusted to fit the others. But after the reversion of my edits I consequently begun the 2020 segment of the infobox hostility, where no one tries to compromise and everyone tries to push their agenda. No one here should be trying to interpret the wishes of someone is deceased, that much is clear. While it's not "required" in the guidelines that you all endlessly cite to each other, there's something called "common sense" for a typical reader and a typical featured topic that would expect all of these articles in a proposed featured topic to share a similar format in regard to infoboxes: Whether that be the current "identibox", the currently unused Monteverdi template or the infobox used on the other Monteverdi opera articles at the moment. I propose that in this matter we vote for a consensus between the use of these three options so that we can all go back to making meaningful contributions and perhaps the featured topic can be nominated in time for Brian's birthday on the 4th. Aza24 (talk) 21:09, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

• Aza24, just a couple of little pointers, if I may. 1. "Votes" don't count (please see WP:VOTE for the full explanation, but in a nutshell, people who come to discussions like this and say "I support Option A" don't get counted. We have discussions to bring about a new WP:consensus on matters. At the moment the WP:STATUS QUO is the consensus, and it needs to be argued for and against to provide a new consensus (the links on consensus and vote give more information). You may think this long-winded and lacking in common sense, but there is rationale and sense behind it, and ensures that things that are "good" don't just get washed away. 2. It's not an asinine argument. There are good reasons and good logic to both positions, which is exactly why there isn't a clear "winner" who has swept the board, and why there are differences in what appear to be similar types of articles. 3. Please don't dismiss the thoughts of either side as you have done above: it starts the conversation off on a bad footing and increases the chances that people will continue down the path you have laid and be more uncivil than they may have otherwise neen. (I am in a very civil conversation with someone about an IB with everyone behaving very politely to one another at the moment, and I only wish they could all be like that). - SchroCat (talk) 21:24, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

@SchroCat: with all due respect, I am familiar with WP:VOTE, however, a "discussion and debate" has been going on for more than 10 years. The discussion here that has arisen and will continue to arise is hardly a discussion and more of various subtle attacks. If you truly wish to cite "policies" I would respectfully remind you of WP:COMMONSENSE that states "Being too wrapped up in rules can cause loss of perspective, so there are times when it is better to ignore a rule. Even if a contribution "violates" the precise wording of a rule, it might still be a good contribution." I hope you understand how this is an easy solution that only addresses to use of infoboxes in Monteverdi Opera articles and I would invite you to vote below. Aza24 (talk) 21:34, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

No. I will not vote: as I have explained to you, voting is meaningless, as I have already shown. We do not throw out all our guidelines just because one user wants to do something a certain way. If you want to bring about a change to this article that has been challenged, you have to go through the process. The process is there to stop a kangeroo court approach such as this, and changes will not - cannot - be justified by ignoring the standing consensus. IAR is sometime a good rule, but when people try to use it to ride roughshod over the well-held and structured arguements of either side, it is a millstone. This cuts both ways, or I could start a vote to remove IBs I just don't like, and people would be (quite rightly) up in arms about it. - SchroCat (talk) 21:49, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

It's the wrong question though, or at least the wrong rationale for asking. The featured topic criteria require that the articles use a common infobox, and they do: they all use {{infobox opera}}. The criteria do not dictate that the same parameters be used in each article - there's nothing preventing one from using fewer, or for that matter more. If you're of the opinion that this article should use more parameters for reasons entirely unrelated to the proposed featured topic nomination, great, have that discussion. But don't make it about the FT, and don't make the FT contingent on agreeing here on a single parameter set for all of them. At the moment you've set up an all-or-nothing discussion that makes it (IMO) less possible to compromise on anything, for either "side". Nikkimaria (talk) 21:54, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

@SchroCat and Nikkimaria: Sigh – fine then. It doesn't have to be about it being part of the featured topic criteria, it can be about the fact that there is no reason in existence why one Monteverdi article would be different than another in this respect. Once again, I don't care what the result is, but one of the three options should be chosen, at the very least so the Monteverdi template can be deleted if not used. You all cite rules that have never resulting in any meaningful compromise in this case and then say that not abiding them would be a bad idea. I tried to propose an easy way out but it seems that no one wants a way out in the first place, so please argue about this until it quites down in a couple of weeks so then I can finally nominate the topic. - Aza24 (talk) 22:05, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Look, I get that you're frustrated, but you're blocking off possible avenues for compromise by saying that the end result has to be one of the three options below. It doesn't. There is no reason in existence why the articles need to be identical, and we shouldn't be having a vote here about making them all either what's here or what's there. Nikkimaria (talk) 22:10, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

No, you're right, I recognize that common sense doesn't have a place here on Wikipedia. Just let me know when this discussion is over so I can nominate a featured topic that was supposed to have been nominated yesterday and be reflective of Brian's legacy, not the legacy of an infobox debate. Aza24 (talk) 22:21, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Here's a common-sense answer for you: nominate it whenever you like. It's not contingent on this discussion. Nikkimaria (talk) 22:26, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

'legacy of an infobox debate' .. 'pouring petrol onto the embers of the infobox wars' .. there, fixed that for you. Scarabocchio (talk) 13:06, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

I find Nikkimaria's argument convincing that the Featured topics criteria don't ask for the same parameters to be filled. It's fine then to leave the article as it was. Sorry that my premises were wrong, and the emotions that caused. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:16, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Update

Thanks to Nikkimaria and SchroCat for their respectful discussion with me. As Nikkimaria pointed out, the current status does not actually impede a featured topic nomination, so I have begun the nomination and anyone who wants to can discuss it here. Apologies if I overreacted, a frustrating situation at first but not seemingly pertinent to the Featured topic in the first place. Aza24 (talk) 01:43, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

Footnotes

While fixing some lint errors and page range formatting, it struck me as odd and not consistent with other opera articles that the Italian incipits are given in footnotes and not inline. I suggest to incorporate them into the narration. E.g.

… who claims greater power than either: "I tell the virtues what to do, I govern the fortunes of men."

Notes

do this instead:

… who claims greater power than either: "I tell the virtues what to do, I govern the fortunes of men" ("Io le virtuti insegno, io le fortune domo")

Further, I recommend that the existing short citations be standardised with {{sfn}} or {{sfnp}}; at the moment, most short citations use just the author's name, others use the year (the recommended method), others use author + (short title), sometimes for the same author (Rosand), which makes finding the cited source unnecessarily cumbersome. I'm aware that WP:CITEVAR has been interpreted as requiring consensus for such a change. So, is there any appetite for such (IMO modest) change? -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 04:59, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Looking at the handful of FAs about operas I don't think there is in practice a norm for translating incipits (a word I didn't know and am glad to learn). Of FAs about operas in languages other than English, Agrippina doesn't translate them at all, by and large; The Bartered Bride gives them in English and not in the original in the main text (with a table later on giving both); Carmen gives the French titles with no English translations; Falstaff gives the Italian and then the English inline; Gianni Schicchi likewise (though differently punctuated from Falstaff's); Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria, like The Bartered Bride gives them in English and not in the original in the main text with a table later on giving both; ditto for the article under consideration here, L'incoronazione di Poppea; L'Orfeo sticks to English, though there is, perhaps strangely, a separate article on the various numbers, giving both Italian and English); Les pêcheurs de perles gives French only; Orpheus in the Underworld follows the set-up for The Bartered Bride and Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patri; Rinaldo sticks to Italian only, in general; and Tosca gives Italian titles with English in brackets. A logical case could be made for rationalising all the above, though it would require a huge (and to my mind disproportionate) effort, and I suggest any proposal to do so ought to be floated at the project talk pages for opera and classical music.

The principal author of the article (and of all but three of the above-mentioned FAs), the greatly missed Brian Boulton, died nearly four years ago. Speaking as one of several editors who keep an eye on the articles BB took to FA – more than 100 of them – I think he would have welcomed the above suggestion for the referencing. I don't use the sfn system myself, and rather dislike it, but in his later FACs BB adopted it. (Is it correct, though, to call it "the recommended method"? Recommended by whom, where?) But as the proposal has implications for other articles it might be as well to raise the suggestion on the two project talk pages as well. Tim riley talk 08:49, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, Michael, for bringing it up here. I also found the great BB open to changes serving readers and editors. I think you can go ahead and make the changes for this article, and take from there if others should follow. As nice as consistency across articles is, it has never worked well for Wikipedia, and is no goal I pursue. Consistency within one article seems a better idea.

I support both sfn referencing, and having the Italian seen right next to the translation, without awkward going back and forth. This may be different for Smetana, because fewer readers will profit from Czech than Italian, Italian being what you now will hear in opera houses and on recordings. Italian with English in brackets may be preferable for this opera. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:09, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

I prefer including the incipt translations in line rather than in a footnote or table. I do think this would be nice to standardize across the FAs, but only after a discussion at the opera project, and no one may be willing to go through all of them all to do it, since there's nothing actually wrong with any of them. As for the short cites, you only need to include the year when there are two or more books by the same author. I do not see any reason to convert the refs to sfn or other templates, because manual short cites and are much easier for tech dummes like me to use. -- Ssilvers (talk) 16:50, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

So I take it that incorporating the Italian incipits into the article is not controversial now. Although I think that they should normally not be in italics, to cause the least disruption to the format here, I suggest: … who claims greater power than either: "I tell the virtues what to do, I govern the fortunes of men" (Io le virtuti insegno, io le fortune domo). (Note that I moved the full stop to the end, outside the quotation marks.) Bar any objections, I will change the article accordingly in the next 2 days.

As I say above, as this has implications for a whole range of articles I don't think you should do anything without establishing a consensus on the Opera and Classical Music project pages. Tim riley talk 12:23, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

As for the format of shortened footnotes: Most scholarly works and most Wikipedia articles use the author-date style. This article uses the date part only when necessary, and sometimes uses an author + (short title) format. I think such a mixture is unfortunate and possibly confusing. The aim of citations is to let readers look at the sources. This would be much easier if the text "Carter (2002), pp. 1–2" were a clickable link to Carter's work. This can be done with {{sfnp|Carter|2002|pp=1–2}} which doesn't seem to require much technical knowledge. However, the template(s) {{sfn(p)}} &c can be used to retain the style as it exists here now. Thoughts? -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 03:20, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

The restriction of the dates to two or more works by the same author makes it clearer and so easier for the reader, I find. The clickable link is no real use unless it opens the actual source rather than merely its biobliographical details. I think you should seek a wider consensus, as above, if trying to establish a new norm and changing WP policies. Tim riley talk 12:23, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Tim, 2 responses: a) Incipits: As you observed, there's no unified style for these now, and I'm convinced that a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Opera won't result in consensus for one. Articles have grown in different ways, and there is no compelling format either way. However, the format in this article is particularly unhelpful; 2 editors agree with that. b) Shortened footnotes format: Only inline citations provide 1-click access to a source. They are impractical if many different pages of a work are cited. {{sfn}}-templated citations at least spare the reader from having to locate the cited source in the bibliography. Again, I don't think the Opera Project will come to a consensus on the preferred method, nor should it. I'm just suggesting how this article could be improved. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:06, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Well, as I say, the BB of his later years would agree with you about the sfn system. He and I had some amicable arm-wrestling and a certain amount of mutual tooth-baring in some of our joint FAC overhauls as to the formatting (as well as to the pruning of each other's prose). E.g. he won chez Shaw, and I won chez Delius and Holst. I find the same with SchroCat with whom I have collaborated on even more articles than I did with Brian. In our present enterprise SC has courteously followed my lead, and in others I have followed his. Though I'm fully aware of WP:OWN I can't help regarding some of BB's successful FACs as "his" and I try to imagine what he would say when presented with questions such as the one before us. I think he would approve of your suggestion about sfn'ing things, as long as you don't bag it as a precedent and try to impose it on other FAs by, e.g., me. But as to the incipits (how one loves to play with a newly found word!) I remain of the view that without a project-wide consensus we should refrain from substantially changing the layout agreed at FAC. Tim riley talk 14:03, 15 October 2023 (UTC)