Wikipedia:WikiProject Opera

"WP:WPO" redirects here. For the Wikiproject devoted to creating links to articles with few or no incoming links, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Orphanage. For the message board, see Wikipediocracy.

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.

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.

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

The project was started by Viajero in June 2004. The Opera Project's original logo was this photo of the Sydney Opera House. Its current logo, based on the facade of the Palais Garnier, was designed by Javitomad in October 2007. The number of active participants grew from 2 in 2004 to 11 by the end of 2005. As of December 2010, there were over 35 active participants listed. In May 2006 there were 1,835 articles on opera subjects, rising to 3,530 in June 2007. The project reached the 5,000 article milestone on September 4, 2008 with La púrpura de la rosa. As of February 2023 there were over 13,000 articles under the Opera Project banner, including 7,900 biographies of opera singers. Approximately 25% of all opera-related articles were rated stub class.

In October 2006, the project began Composer of the Month, a monthly collaboration focusing on creating articles for operas by various composers in The Opera Corpus. It now focuses on improving opera composers' biographies and the coverage of subjects related to their works. In November 2007 a second monthly collaboration was added. It was originally called Singer of the Month and focused on creating articles for singers. From January 2009, this was changed to Opera of the Month and now focuses on improving existing articles on operas and subjects related to them. The archive of all the past monthly collaborations is here. The Project was featured in the 18 May 2009 edition of The Wikipedia Signpost. In July of that year, Portal:Opera was promoted to featured status.

Related projects

• Descendant WikiProjects: WikiProject Gilbert and Sullivan and WikiProject Richard Wagner.
• Similar WikiProjects: WikiProject Classical music and WikiProject Composers.

Key articles and lists

• The main article is, of course, Opera.
• For a complete listing of articles indexing operatic topics, see Category:Opera-related lists which includes:
  • The opera corpus – an extended list of over 2,500 works (not all of which have Wikipedia articles yet) by more than 775 composers.
  • List of operas – an alphabetical list of operas with Wikipedia articles, with their composer and premiere date
  • List of important operas – an annotated chronological list of operas which are included for their historical significance or widespread popularity (or both).
  • List of major opera composers – an annotated compilation of the most frequently named composers on ten lists by opera experts
  • List of opera librettists – an annotated alphabetical list of opera librettists and their works
  • List of opera houses – a list of the world's opera houses (not all of which have Wikipedia articles yet) arranged by continent, and then country
• WikiProject Opera popular pages lists the top 1,000 pages within the scope of the project ordered by number of views. It is automatically updated each month.
• Wikidata-generated lists:
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject Opera/Operas list
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject Opera/Characters list
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject Opera/Sopranos
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject Opera/Mezzo-Sopranos
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject Opera/Contraltos
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject Opera/Countertenors
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject Opera/Tenors
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject Opera/Baritones
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject Opera/Basses
• The table below shows the current assessment status of all articles under the project's banner as well as the other classes of pages carrying the banner. (Class "NA" refers to redirect pages.) A full list of current and former "recognized content" (Featured articles, Featured lists, Good articles, and Did You Know?) under the WikiProject Opera banner is available here.

FA	A	GA	B	C	Start	Stub	FL	List	Category	Disambig	Draft	File	Portal	Project	Template	NA	???	Total
40	0	56	478	1,313	7,986	3,276	3	243	2,613	9	35	161	265	258	343	192	59	17,330

Featured articles and lists

This section also includes articles under the banners of our descendant projects – WikiProject Richard Wagner and WikiProject Gilbert and Sullivan.

Dmitri Shostakovich • Her Majesty's Theatre • Mozart in Italy • Rhinemaidens • Thespis • Trial by Jury • W. S. Gilbert • Agrippina • Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky • Bedřich Smetana • The Bartered Bride • L'incoronazione di Poppea • H.M.S. Pinafore • L'ange de Nisida • List of important operas • List of major opera composers • List of operas by Mozart • Bayreuth canon • Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria • Tosca • L'Orfeo • Gianni Schicchi • Rinaldo (opera) • Nixon in China (opera) • English National Opera • Kathleen Ferrier • Georges Bizet • Les pêcheurs de perles • Monteverdi's lost operas • Royal Opera, London • Richard Wagner • Carl Nielsen

Further recognized opera-related content, including Good articles, is available here.

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.