Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Opera/Article styles and formats

Roles table

The RfC at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Accessibility#RfC on table captions will most likely end with a recommendation that all tables should have captions (see also MOS:DTAB and MOS:TABLECAPTION). This has implications for almost all articles on operas that contain a table of roles as recommended in this style guide. I recommend the following change:

Premiere cast, 2 January 1843

Role	Voice type	Conductor: Richard Wagner
The Dutchman	baritone	Johann Michael Wächter
Senta, Daland's daughter	soprano	Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient
Daland, a Norwegian sailor	bass	Friedrich Traugott Reinhold
Erik, a huntsman	tenor	Carl Risse
Mary, Senta's nurse	contralto	Thérèse Wächter
Daland's steersman	tenor	Wenzel Bielezizky
Norwegian sailors, the Dutchman's crew, young women

Further details need to be worked out for multiple notable premieres. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 02:57, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

• Michael, what do you think about the following version? It's a bit "cleaner" and more importantly involves only a minimal change to the table itself and doesn't require dealing with tables with multiple premieres. It also makes it clearer that the names in the third column are the names of the role creators and that the table contains both the roles and the premiere cast.

Roles, voice types, and premiere cast

Role	Voice type	Premiere cast, 2 January 1843 Conductor: Richard Wagner
The Dutchman	baritone	Johann Michael Wächter
Senta, Daland's daughter	soprano	Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient
Daland, a Norwegian sailor	bass	Friedrich Traugott Reinhold
Erik, a huntsman	tenor	Carl Risse
Mary, Senta's nurse	contralto	Thérèse Wächter
Daland's steersman	tenor	Wenzel Bielezizky
Norwegian sailors, the Dutchman's crew, young women

Voceditenore (talk) 07:28, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

Once we talk about the tables, I am not happy with the bolded links in the headers, and wonder if voice type really needs a link in an opera article, and if the conductor needs to be in the header. Perhaps we could even expand the table to include conductor, stage director, costumes etc. - which would need thinking about voice types, of course. - If the conductor remains in the header, s/he will have been mentioned before and doesn't need another link. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:56, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

Repeting: Wagner would not have described the title role as "The Dutchman" ;) - Do today's programs really still write that? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:00, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

Gerda, I'm not sure, but I think the bolding is inherent in the table syntax. I don't mind it frankly. I also think it's a good idea to link to Voice type. As for the Conductor, just leave it out if it seems inappropriate. I leave the whole line blank if the conductor is unknown, although I agree with you that the conductor line is redundant, belongs in the Performance history section and ought to be left out of the table. What I would not be in favour of is expanding the table and in the process making it more complicated to include the cells for various stage crew, conductor, director, etc. Their names belong in the Performance history section, where the opening night is described, along with the conductor. The purpose of the Roles section is precisely that, and shouldn't be further cluttered. PS. The Royal Opera House refers to the character is "The Dutchman". Ditto the Met. Voceditenore (talk) 10:05, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

The bolding is inherent to the table syntax, but we decide to link or not, and to mention the conductor or not. In articles I write, both rather not, no link to avoid the ugliness of that bold blue (I believe that "voice type" is self-explanatory, + in the context of all these links to soprano et al, - if deemed necessary it could be linked on top of the table), and no conductor per what you said about "roles" ;) - I'll probably not live long enough to see The Dutchman go ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:53, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

The table header should not just repeat the column headers. If there's room enough we might think about saying also - in brackets, or the translation in brackets, or an extra column - what the character names are in the native language, such as "Königin der Nacht". Probably the ROH and MET will call her Queen of the Night, but the original poster will not. "Wy do we mention Daland as Senta's father before he even came up? - My table would begin like this:

The following table lists the roles with their voice type as in the score, and if known the performer who created the role in the world premiere on 2 January 1843, conducted by the composer:

Roles and premiere cast of Der Fliegende Holländer

Role	Voice type	Premiere performer
Der Holländer (The Dutchman)	baritone	Johann Michael Wächter
Senta	soprano	Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient
Daland, a Norwegian sailor, Senta's father	bass	Friedrich Traugott Reinhold

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:18, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

I like the header row in boldface. As far as the native name/English name, since most of the time it will be the same name, I don't think it should be another column but should just be next to the English name in parenthesis and maybe also italics. However, it always annoys me that the conductor is not part of the table. Particularly with contemporary operas where we know all the people involved, might the function of this table be expanded to include those who were involved in the initial production including director, scene and costume designer, etc.? Or do you want to leave it purely as characters in the opera? - kosboot (talk) 12:50, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

I agree with kosboot, at most the "native name" can go in parentheses next to the English name. It certainly doesn't need a separate column. However, I would prefer to keep the role table confined to roles, their voice type, and their creators, and not include anyone else. Do the director, scene, and costume designer really need to be in a clunky table format rather than in the text? "Keep it simple" is my motto. Voceditenore (talk) 13:33, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

I changed to brackets, then. Never understood why the description in English is italic, so dropped that as a test. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:48, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

Now I have a question. I like the descriptions of the characters, particularly if they are related to one another. But based on the comment above (that we know of Senta as Daland's daughter before we are introduced to Daland), is there a prescribed order in which the characters are listed? - kosboot (talk) 15:41, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

I don't know. Money the soloist gets for the performance perhaps ;) ... like in the first program? ... some radio stations say: "in the order of appearance"? - I like the descriptions, too, all I dropped was the italics for them. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:40, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

ps: I usually take the order from where I find a source, - just the easiest way. My felling is they list important roles first, secondary later. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:41, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

My my this is going to be a lot of work for someone to do.What about tables of recordings, videos and DVD'S? It's all very well for MOS people to say "all articles have to have this feature " but it involves thousands of articles on this project and is the sort of fiddly little format fixing I find unsatisfying. I hope nobody starts slapping tags on our articles PUT CAPTIONS ON THESE TABLES.Smeat75 (talk) 19:29, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

Maybe it can be understood to be used "from this point forward" and for anyone desiring to go back and modify an existing article. - kosboot (talk) 20:06, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

Can we please concentrate on the effects of the accessibility RfC on this table and its general features and leave discussion specific to the Dutchman for that article's talk page?

I'm undecided between Voceditenore's proposal and mine; mine condenses the table, VdT's is a minimal change although it doesn't convey any information. I don't like Gerda's because it doesn't provide any information and omits date and conductor which I like there for ease of finding that essential information. It would also be a significant departure from the current scheme. Linking "Voice type" is probably helpful to non-specialist readers, but I wouldn't object to not linking it if consensus so decides. I think italics for role descriptors are widely used and serve to distinguish clearly a role name from other names associated with it, but I would not object to using non-italics. Naturally, I'm enthusiastically in favour of kosboot's suggestion to take this RfC to mean "from this point forward". Nevertheless, this style guide needs to be changed soonish. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 02:12, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

I guess like VdT's version only because the date is more clearly visible since it's within the table. - kosboot (talk) 02:36, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

I changed the indent in my post above to indicate more clearly that I suggest a preceding sentence from now on, which has the links I find disturbing in the headers, and the date. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:18, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

Proposal

• Assuming this RfC passes and assuming my version is preferred (or we can use Michael's if you all prefer that one), I suggest we update the existing example tables and add the following to the beginning of the Role tables section:

---

In line with the 2020 RfC on table captions to aid accessibility for those using screen readers, role tables going forward should have an incorporated caption as illustrated below. When updating existing tables the caption can be added by placing +Roles, voice types, and premiere cast as the second line in the table code, e.g.

{| class="wikitable"
|+Roles, voice types, and premiere cast
!Role
![[Voice type]]
!Premiere cast, 2 January 1843<br />([[Conducting|Conductor]]: [[Richard Wagner]])

---

We can add something similar for the Recordings (table style) and Lists of operas by composers sections. Thoughts? But as Michael says, let's just keep the discussion to this one issue. Voceditenore (talk) 17:36, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

Looks good to me. Btw I have received clarification at that RfC by the editor who started it that tags or warnings should not be slapped on articles that have tables without captions. That's what worried me, especially since someone else at that RfC explicitly suggested it.Smeat75 (talk) 19:55, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

Smeat75, I don't think we have to worry about indiscriminate tag-bombing. I'm glad WP continues to try to improve accessibility, and the goal of this new proposal is admirable. However, the scale of trying to change hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of articles means that such proposals get little traction in practice. Think of all the sports, television, and pop music articles that use tables extensively. I remember in 2008 when the accessibility folk decided that "the names of works, and other terms, not in English, should be marked up with the {{lang}} template, using the appropriate two-letter language code; for example: {{lang|de|Von heute auf morgen}}." They added it to our Article guidelines. Needless to say we have pretty much ignored it. Given the vast number of instances of foreign titles and terms in opera articles, the pages would have been cluttered with this code (which also changed the display in some instances). The person who added the new "rule" made a few attempts to start sprinkling it around opera articles, but soon gave up. Voceditenore (talk) 10:36, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

Fine. We better get this resolved soon; people are getting restless. I've modified that edit with the proposal above. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 12:21, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, Michael. I've now gone ahead and made the above changes to the Article styles and formats page. Voceditenore (talk) 10:02, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

I've learned in the meantime that the template {{sronly}} may be used to hide this table caption from sighted readers if it substantially duplicates adjacent text that is visible. I've used that mechanism a few times, e.g. in Prometheus (Orff), L'oca del Cairo, Le comte Ory, The Magic Flute, but I also forgot to apply it to some others that I had to edit.

If visible output is not desired, the caption can be hidden with {{sronly}}:
|+{{sronly|Roles, voice types, and premiere cast}}

Should this method of satisfying the accessibility requirements with no visible change be mentioned? -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 11:54, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

Absolutely. Thanks so much for this, Michael! I've now added it to the various sections dealing with tables. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 14:13, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

Conductor in parentheses

Can someone remind me why the guideline overleaf uses parentheses around the conductor's entry? I suggest to remove them there, and from now on in articles, too. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:29, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Section order – Performance history

The guideline overleaf recommends that the section "Performance history" appear before "Roles". This doesn't seem to be widely followed and is disputed in this edit summary. What should be done? -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 05:35, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Michael, I've added a note re the alternative of placing that section after the synopsis. We could also explicitly change the position in the guidelines. However, the note at the top of the page probably covers this: "Like all recommendations, they should be used with common sense and if necessary adapted for the needs of particular articles.". There are good arguments for either position, frankly. When I write articles on individual operas, I usually have a combined "Background and performance history" section right after the lede. However, for long detailed FAs, it makes sense to put that section after the synopsis, especially because such articles have longish, well-developed ledes which cover the key points of the background and performance history. Plus the well-known opera warhorses usually have quite lengthy performance histories. On the other hand, the table of contents allows the reader to skip to whatever section they're mainly interested in anyway. I'll notify the main OP talk page to get some more input. Voceditenore (talk) 09:44, 18 October 2020 (UTC)