Classical Music Forum banner

We need to get organized

4K views 27 replies 6 participants last post by  Elgarian 
#1 ·
I'm trying to copy and paste here my reviews from elsewhere. Herkku has done his already, congratulations! I encourage everybody else to do it as well. I know it's time consuming, and I'll have to stop now since the folks who came to celebrate Christmas are arriving, I'll continue a couple of days from now.

One problem: Sometimes people start a thread saying, for instance, Richard Strauss on DVD and Blu-ray, but they start by reviewing an opera in their first post, which then doesn't get quoted in the title. When the composer you're reviewing doesn't have a thread yet (and is important enough to deserve one) I encourage folks to post a short post as the first one just to give the thread its title, and then in your second post, you title it for the name of the opera you're reviewing. This is to make it easier to recover reviews using the Search function.

Another problem, this one for Gaston:

It's hard to know when to start a new thread, when to relegate a composer to some already existing more generic threads like "miscelaneous" or "early opera" or "Russian opera" or "romantic French opera."

We need well defined categories, with examples of what works should go into that thread, listed on the thread's first post. I know I'm guilty of it since I've started an "early opera" thread to list a mask by Purcell. But then after I did it (and not being a moderator I can't delete it) I was unsure if this should encompass pre-opera, super-early opera, fringe genres, or should include the likes of Monteverdi, Lully, etc, as defined by "early." So please, Gaston, clean it up for me.

We have a thread called Russian opera and one for Prokofiev.

We have one for "Modern opera" which may be too large. Does this mean any 20th and 20th century opera that is not R. Strauss or Puccini?

Happy holidays to all of you, I'll continue later my contributions to this sub-forum.
 
See less See more
#2 ·
Yes, there will some corrections have to be made as we go along I think. I expect new members in the future to sometimes post their reviews on the wrong threads, but this can always easily be corrected and isn't a massive amount of work. There are also several composers deserving of their own thread that have been put in 'general' categories. If for example Berg and Berlioz have their own threads (and they should) then there's no reason not to give Britten one of his own as well. But a few weeks from now when all the different categories are in place things will be much clearer.
 
#3 ·
Ok, let me try to come up with a list of composers that we in my opinion could consider giving a thread of their own:

Monteverdi
Purcell
Lully
Rameau
Handel
Gluck
Mozart
Weber
Berlioz
Meyerbeer
Rossini
Bellini
Donizetti
Verdi
Puccini
Offenbach
Gounod
Massenet
Saint-Saens
Tchaikovsky
Rimsky-Korsakov
Wagner
Strauss
Janacek
Berg
Prokofiev
Britten
...and maybe a few others that escape my mind right now.

That's a whole lot of composers. But what's good about it is that these composers cover 90% or more of all the operas that are discussed here which would make it less likely that posters put their reviews in the wrong genre categories. In fact, it would take away the need for most of those genre categories in my opinion. We'd only need one for Operetta and maybe one for contemporary opera (living composers). All the rest could be put in a Miscellaneous category.

What do you (and everyone else) think? Best to decide on this as soon as possible since that the longer we wait the more work it will be to correct whatever we may do wrong now.
 
#5 ·
The threads

I acted according to a list posted earlier, which I thought was workable.

Individual composers with a thread of their own were:

Monteverdi (I'm not sure about this, perhaps "Early opera" could include Purcell as well)
Handel
Mozart
Rossini
Bellini
Donizetti
Verdi
Wagner
Massenet
Tchaikovsky
Puccini
Richard Strauss
Janacek
Prokofiev

Other threads:

French Baroque
Italian Baroque
"Other Baroque"
Classical other than Mozart
French romantic
Italian romantic
German romantic
Russian Opera
Operetta (I would include the French Opera comique with Offenbach here!)
Modern
Miscellaneous (What will end up here?)

Italian romantic has already been changed into Italian romantic opera and verismo.

Lully and Rameau would easily fit under "French baroque". What else would we put there?

Gluck could go under "Classical other than Mozart", but I don't mind a thread of his own.

Weber under "German romantic".

Meyerbeer, Berlioz, Gounod, and Saint-Saëns under "French romantic".

Rimsky-Korsakov under "Russian Opera".

Berg with his two works could go under "Modern".

Britten could go under "Modern" as well.

I don't mind more threads. Perhaps they would make things clearer for users. These are just my thoughts about how we could manage it with the original suggestion.
 
#7 ·
Other threads:

Operetta (I would include the French Opera comiqu

Italian romantic has already been changed into Italian romantic opera and verismo.

Lully and Rameau would easily fit under "French baroque". What else would we put there?

Gluck could go under "Classical other than Mozart", but I don't mind a thread of his own.

Weber under "German romantic".

Meyerbeer, Berlioz, Gounod, and Saint-Saëns under "French romantic".

Rimsky-Korsakov under "Russian Opera".

Berg with his two works could go under "Modern".

Britten could go under "Modern" as well.
All that is true, but posters have already created threads for composers that were not on that earlier list you're talking about. That's why I thought that maybe it would be a good idea to limit the genre categories to an absolute minimum - miscellaneous, operetta and living composers. I mean, there's little point in creating a, say, French baroque thread today when someone else comes up with threads for Lully and Rameau tomorrow which would result in some people posting their reviews on the French Baroque thread while others post theirs on the Lully and Rameau threads. So maybe it's best to give all the big names threads of their own and keep the miscellaneous thread for the really obscure stuff and for someone like Beethoven who only has one opera to his credit. I'm ok with whatever you guys want to do though. No formula will be 100% perfect. I'm just trying to come up with something we can all agree about and that will work best in the long run. I always expected that once we got going some minor adjustments would have to be made because it's only while you're in the process of doing it that you notice what works, what doesn't and what could possibly go wrong in the future.
 
#9 ·
I'm currently moving post from the Opera on DVD thread - including where possible the post-review discussions - to the newly created threads. When I'm done I will ask everyone to have a look at what will be left of the Opera on DVD thread and if everyone agrees we can delete it at that point. All the significant (and many of the not so significant) posts will be on those new threads anyway. You will see that I'm editing a lot of posts, but I only make very minor changes. Things like replacing links of pictures of DVD covers that didn't work anymore, editing out some comments (usually at the beginning of posts) that make no sense in the context of the new threads and so on.
 
#10 ·
This turns out to be a VERY big job. I've already moved loads of posts over to the new threads, but there's still lots to be done I think. I'll call it quits for now - I've worked enough already for Christmas day.:( But I'll continue in the next couple of days.

It's impossible to rescue ALL of the posts because some of them feature reviews and discussions of operas by different composers and they thus don't fit into any of the new categories. These are however a minority. And I can't re-post replies to reviews that other posters have already pasted on the new threads either because when I move those replies from one thread to another they are ordered by the dates that they were originally posted. Pasting is not an option when it comes to other people's posts because then it will look as though they are my own replies. All this however is only a minor issue. The most important thing is that those threads now look less Amazon like and restore the atmosphere of cameraderie and fun that Almaviva feared would be lost on this subforum.
 
#16 ·
Ok, I've plowed through the entire "Opera on DVD" thread and moved as many posts as I could over to the new threads. Could that I've overlooked things, so I think it's best if you guys check the "Opera on DVD" thread to see if there are any of your posts left that you want to paste to the new threads. A few days (or weeks) from now I think that it would be best to delete the entire "Opera on DVD" thread because needless to say - with all the posts that have been moved over to other threads THAT thread makes no sense anymore and it's nearly impossible now to follow the narrative.
 
#17 ·
Thanks, good job! I had copied all my posts in that Opera on DVD thread - I haven't checked to see if there is double posting after you did your pasting, but in the only case that I did check, there was - my review of Les Troyens had been copied into the new Berlioz thread already and I've noticed that you posted it again, minus the edits I had already implemented, so, please, delete the one you posted because mine I think makes a little more sense with the edits.

I still have a huge job ahead, since most of my reviews were in the Current Watching thread, and I've been slowly going through it.
 
#20 ·
Is there an archive section where we could keep Opera on DVD and Current Watching?

They could be labelled & locked so any new people wouldn't get confused. There is so much of our personalities on those two threads and I would hate them to disappear.

If you can't, I'd like to copy & paste them as text on my own PC, but I'm leaving soon for Munich & won't have time to do it until I get back.

Can your 'house-keeping' wait until the New Year?
 
#21 ·
Annie, if you like those threads we'll keep them. ;) Keep in mind though that I've moved a lot of posts from the Opera on DVD thread over to those new threads, so it will often be very hard to make sense of that thread now.
 
#25 · (Edited)
Based on what Gaston asked for, I'm not touching my old reviews (except for one that I placed in the Miscelanous thread from another thread in my early days here). I've been posting, however, new reviews that weren't in any of the Talk Classical threads - I'm recovering them from what I had done for another site.
 
#26 ·
Based on what Gaston asked for, I'm not touching my old reviews (except for one that I placed in the Miscelanous thread from another thread in my early days here). I've been posting, however, new reviews that weren't in any of the Talk Classical thrads - I'm recovering them from what I had done for another site.
Brilliant. Thanks. :)
 
#28 ·
I did a little shunting of old stuff (Puccini) a couple of days ago and discovered how time-consuming the process is. So to come here today and see the massive amount of labour performed by Gaston on our behalf in such a short time was pretty amazing.

Thanks Gaston. I don't know how you've found the time or stamina, but wow.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top