Wikipedia:WikiProject Opera

WikiProject Opera is a group of editors writing and maintaining Wikipedia's articles on operas, opera composers and librettists, opera singers and other opera-related subjects. The project also maintains the Opera portal. On our talk page, all editors working in the area (not just members) can exchange ideas and ask questions. Over the years we have developed project guides to writing, structuring, and formatting opera-related articles and for categorizing and assessing them. Our copyright guide focuses on issues particularly relevant to the project's topic area.

Shortcuts

This is a WikiProject, an open group of Wikipedia editors. New participants are welcome; feel free to talk to us!

New members are always welcome! If you are new to Wikipedia, the first thing to do is to become a registered user—see Wikipedia:How to log in. (There is also an FAQ at Wikipedia:Contributing FAQ.) Then add your name to our Members list. You may also like to visit the Opera portal to get an idea of the range of opera coverage on Wikipedia. For more about WikiProjects in general see the WikiProject guide.

Scope

Opera composers and librettists
Operatic works
Opera singers and operatic voice types
Opera houses and opera companies (sometimes but not always the same)
All genres of opera from Afterpiece to Zeitoper, including grand opera and operetta
Opera terminology
Other opera-related topics including opera publications, recordings, and biographies of opera designers, directors and managers.

How you can help

To-do list for Wikipedia:WikiProject Opera:

Check the Opera Search Results (from AlexNewArtBot) for new articles which may fall under the scope of the project. For articles that do fall within the scope, add {{WikiProject Opera}} to the talk page. A selection of clean-up tags can be found here.
There are over 3000 opera-related articles classed as "stubs". The full list can be found at Category:Stub-Class Opera articles. Check these once in a awhile to see if the class still applies. Some may well have been considerably expanded since they were last rated and need their quality rating changed. Or you may find a stub on a potentially useful/important topic that you could expand yourself or nominate for one of the monthly collaborations above.
The Opera Project cleanup list shows articles in need of clean up, referencing, expert attention, merging, splitting, verification, 'wikification', etc..
Check the list of opera-related articles with unclear notability and address the concerns in an article, or if necessary, propose for the article for deletion.
Rate the unassessed opera-related articles.
Create or request an article on an opera-related topic. See also the red links in The Record of Singing.
Expand opera-related stubs.
Key article improvement lists important articles in need of improvement, expansion and referencing
Our copyvio cleanup page lists opera-related articles needing checks for close paraphrase and/or verbatim copy from copyright sources.
Monitor the WikiProject Opera Watchlist for recent changes to opera-related articles
Add biographies for missing female opera singers as part of the Women in Red initiative (1489 to do)

Guides and resources

Guides

Opera article writing – a general guide to titling, writing, structuring, and formatting opera-related articles.
Opera article styles and formats – a supplement to the Article writing page with a more detailed guide to the style and formatting of opera articles
Categorization – a guide to categorizing opera-related articles
Assessment – a guide to assessing articles in the project's scope
Copyright – a guide to copyright issues on Wikipedia with a special focus on those that are particularly relevant to our topic area.

Resources

Online research – advice on publicly accessible, trustworthy and particularly useful sites for researching articles on opera-related subjects and finding public domain images
Frequently performed opera composers – a list of the most frequently performed opera composers compiled by Scarabocchio from the Operabase performance statistics page, with links to Google searches for each composer
Anniversaries – a list of anniversaries in (births, deaths, premieres) for editors who may wish to plan work on a Featured Article or a Did You Know? entry to coincide with the date or to propose articles for the Composer and Opera of the Month collaborations.

History

Related projects

Key articles and lists

Templates

See also Category:WikiProject Opera templates

Project banner

{{WikiProject Opera}} (code: {{WikiProject Opera|class=}}) should be added to the talk pages of articles within the project's scope. Articles in the descendant projects (Gilbert and Sullivan and Richard Wagner) are normally not included. The banner was added to all identified opera pages by SatyrBot in June 2007, and again by MelonBot in May 2008. Since then, banners have been added manually. All pages with WikiProject Opera banners are in Category:WikiProject Opera articles.

Invitation, welcome, and userboxes

{{Invite opera}} (code: {{subst:invite opera}}) for inviting users to become project members
{{Opera welcome}} (code: {{subst:opera welcome}}) for welcoming new participants
There is a selection of userbox templates indicating project membership here. Alternatively, you can simply add Category:WikiProject Opera participants to your user page.

Infobox opera

Template:Infobox opera is available as an option for articles on individual operas. If used, it occupies the top right position in the article, e.g. Gianni Schicchi. Note that unlike navigational templates, Infobox Opera and the image it contains will appear in both the desk top and mobile versions of Wikipedia.

Portal template

{{portal|Opera}} – for placement in the ==See also== section of opera related articles.

Stubs

All opera-related articles with stub templates can be accessed from Category:Opera stubs with the exception of articles about composers which currently share a stub template with other genres and can be accessed from Category:Composer stubs.

{{Opera-singer-stub}} for biographical articles about opera singers who do not fall into the following national sub-categories:

{{Germany-opera-singer-stub}} · {{Italy-opera-singer-stub}} · {{UK-opera-singer-stub}} · {{US-opera-singer-stub}}

{{composer-stub}} for biographical articles about composers

{{Opera-bio-stub}} for biographical articles on all other persons related to opera – opera directors, librettists, managers, administrators, opera critics, etc.

{{Opera-struct-stub}} for articles about opera houses

{{Opera-company-stub}} for articles about opera companies or opera festivals

{{Opera-stub}} for articles on operas in languages not covered by the sub-categories below, and for opera-related topics that do not fit into any of the other major stub categories, e.g. opera terminology, arias, albums, publications, etc.

{{English-opera-stub}} · {{French-opera-stub}} · {{German-opera-stub}} · {{Italian-opera-stub}}

Navigation boxes

Category:Opera templates contains navboxes for the source works of operas, e.g. {{A Midsummer Night's Dream}}, opera house staff (e.g. {{Berlin State Opera intendants}}), and some opera awards as well as:
- {{Opera genres}}
- {{Opera lists}}
- {{Opera terms}}
- {{Opera categories}}

Horizontal footer navboxes for individual opera composers can be found in Category:Opera templates and/or Category:Operas by composer navigational boxes and can be recognized by their title which is generally the full name of the composer, e.g. Template:Giuseppe Verdi, Template:Vincenzo Bellini, etc.. They are used for easy navigation from one opera to another by the same composer, and many of them have links to more than simply their operas, e.g. other compositions, other articles related to the composer, etc.. They are placed at the foot of the page for each article on a work by the composer. In these templates only the operas which have an existing article should be listed. When not all of a composer's operas have articles, it can be helpful to include a link in the navbox to the complete list of their operas, if one is available. See Template:Étienne Méhul for an example. As with other opera lists, the operas are arranged in chronological order by the date of first performance, but date of composition may be used in individual cases if there is a significant gap between composition and first performance. What constitutes a significant gap will vary according to circumstances, but the most obvious examples are operas such as Donizetti's Le duc d'Albe (composed 1839, premiered posthumously 1882).

Category:Opera navigational boxes lists opera navboxes, which can be used as footers on the articles for those operas. They contain links to related articles such literary sources, adaptations, discographies, individual arias, etc.