History:Style/Specific types of releases/Opera

Development of Style for Opera Tracks

• {i} Purpose: This page is for the evolution of the new style guide we would like to use for tracks from operas.

It starts as my synthesis of the mails from the thread Opera Track Style. Following DonRedman's suggestion, this page is going to evolve (by including digests of what was said on the mailing list, and by direct editing) until we reach a stable enough consensus to try it for real. In Don's proposed system, there are three stages:

• development (current) during which we discuss without editing any real data.
• testing (as soon as we are ready) where we test the proposed style on real data.
• validation (when we are happy with the testing) which means the results of this page become part of the official Style Guides.

I sprinkled this page with the names of users to indicate what position these users seemed to agree with. I hope I guessed your MB names correctly. Please move your names around if you change your mind or if I have misunderstood your position. The idea of course is to try to extract the options which most users like. I would like to try here something slightly different from a voting system, that is you may choose more than one option for each issue.

I identified four main issues in the thread: order, numbering system, punctuation and quotes.

Order

1: the order I originally suggested

• 1 - Opera name
• ( - No catalogue number)
• ( - No movement number)
• 2 - Act number
• 3 - Scene number
• 4 - Type (optional)
• 5 - First words of the scene
• 6 - Part (optional)

Example (don't look at the punctuation): Don Giovanni, Act I, Scene 3, Duettino, "La ci darem la mano" (Don Giovanni, Zerlina)

2: leivhe's order

(cooperaa, davitof)

• 1 - Opera name
• 2 - catalogue number (optional)
• ( - No movement number)
• 3 - Act number
• 4 - Scene number
• 5 - Type (optional)
• 6 - Part (optional)
• 7 - First words of the scene

Example (don't look at the punctuation): Don Giovanni, Act I, Scene 3, Duettino (Don Giovanni, Zerlina), "La cidarem la mano"

Numbering system (act - scene)

• arabic - arabic (davitof, leivhe)
• roman - arabic
• roman - roman (cooperaa, cadalach)

Punctuation

after

• work title: Nobody suggested anything else than a colon.
• act number: Nobody suggested anything else than a comma.
• scene number:
  • I originally suggested a comma
  • cadalach and leivhe suggested a dot, by analogy with the general classical style. I think this is a good idea, since the scene type is closer to a movement indication IMO. cooperaa liked the idea.
  • leivhe suggested we could try a colon.

• part type and parts:
  • nothing (davitof, leivhe)
  • colon (andrewski)
  • comma
  • dot (andrewski, cooperaa)

Examples

• comma comma

• Don Giovanni: Act I, Scene 3, Duettino (Don Giovanni, Zerlina), "La ci darem la mano"

• comma colon

• Don Giovanni: Act I, Scene 3, Duettino (Don Giovanni, Zerlina): "La ci darem la mano"

• comma none

• Don Giovanni: Act I, Scene 3, Duettino (Don Giovanni, Zerlina) "La ci darem la mano"

• comma dot

• Don Giovanni: Act I, Scene 3, Duettino (Don Giovanni, Zerlina). "La ci darem la mano"

• brackets (cooperaa)

• Don Giovanni: Act I, Scene 3 (Duettino: Don Giovanni, Zerlina) "La ci darem la mano"

quotes or not

some users have suggested we could omit the quotes altogether. examples

• comma comma

• Don Giovanni: Act I, Scene 3, Duettino (Don Giovanni, Zerlina), La ci darem la mano

• comma colon

• Don Giovanni: Act I, Scene 3, Duettino (Don Giovanni, Zerlina): La ci darem la mano

• comma none

• Don Giovanni: Act I, Scene 3, Duettino (Don Giovanni, Zerlina) La ci darem la mano

• comma dot

• Don Giovanni: Act I, Scene 3, Duettino (Don Giovanni, Zerlina). La ci darem la mano

Optional information

I (cadalach) have created this new section to solicit opinions on what's been called the optional information. Here I mean, as in the above example, the "Duettino" and "Don Giovanni, Zerlina" information. Would it be sensible to treat this as just one piece of information? That is, either both are included or neither. I'd guess that it would be reasonable to say that if you knew (or cared about) one then you'd know the other too.

Pending issue

(this can be decided separately IMO) (cooperaa), what should we do when several scenes are merged on the same track (MultipleTitleStyle):

• Die Walküre: Act II. Prelude - Act II, Scene I. (Wotan) "Nun zäume dein Ross, reisige Maid!" Die Walküre: Act II. Prelude / Act II, Scene I. (Wotan) "Nun zäume dein Ross, reisige Maid!" Die Walküre: Act II. Prelude - Scene I. (Wotan) "Nun zäume dein Ross, reisige Maid!" Die Walküre: Act II. Prelude / Scene I. (Wotan) "Nun zäume dein Ross, reisige Maid!" Die Walküre: Act II. Prelude, Scene I. (Wotan) "Nun zäume dein Ross, reisige Maid!"

And what do we do when liner notes (non-scene-splitting) have more than one arias/recitatives for a track? Example:

• Croesus, Act II, Scene III: "Seht, wie Herr Elcius ist ein Politicus" (Elcius) / "Mein Kätchen ist ein Mädchen" (Bauernkinder) / "Ich solltes schier mein Unglück vergessen" (Elcius) http://musicbrainz.org/track/7ab7b6c7-a5cf-48e0-beca-f3faa9f006ab.html