Talk:Grand opera

This article has many run-on sentences that can be hard to read at times. This can be easily fixed by simply ending sentences earlier. — Preceding unsigned comment added by A. Lee Crawford (talk • contribs) 22:19, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

Comment

Although it did not even have its' premiere in Italy, Aïda was destined to be not only of the best known of all grand operas, but also one of the most beloved by audiences and critics alike. It has only four acts, but just about everything that is needed to make for a true grand opera is crammed into these four acts. A wonderful ballet, a superb grand march, which, in the writer's humble opinion has never been equalled, not even by Meyerbeer, and some wonderful dramatic situations.

This phrase seemed a little too POV, so I changed it to:

Perhaps the most popular of the Italian grand operas is Verdi's Aïda. Despite having only four acts, it contains several ballets and an extremely well known grand march. Unlike many other grand operas, it continues to be one of the most popular operas still performed today.

Perhaps others can improve. --Alexs letterbox 08:03, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

American Indian Grand Opera

Is the present section on American Indian Grand Opera appropriate as a substantial part of this article? There is an ongoing discussion of this issue on the Opera Project talk page. - Kleinzach 17:55, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

The main concerns can be summarised as such: would "Grand Opera" really be the appropriate term for this genre, and, what is more, notability: "American Indian Grand Opera" gets 2 Google hits. The genre seems to consist of 1 opera - was it ever performed? Moreschi 19:04, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

I have added a split section template to the page which I believe is in line with our discussion. I look forward to reading comments. - Kleinzach 22:02, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Precise terminology

I think that perhaps this article confuses two distinct terms, viz, grand opera and grand opéra. Here are two Oxford reference definitions:

The Oxford Dictionary of Music:

Grand Opera

Imprecise term, generally taken to mean either

(a) opera in which every note of the lib. is sung, i.e. no spoken dialogue, or

(b) 'serious' opera as distinct from operetta.

Grand opéra (Fr.) means an epic or historical work in 4 or 5 acts, using large orch., the ch. and incl. a ballet.

The Oxford Companion to Music (also in the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Opera, by Harold Rosenthal and John Warrack)

grand opera

In common English usage, serious opera without spoken dialogue. In French, more precisely, grand opéra (as opposed to opéra comique) means a serious, epic work on a historical, mythic, or legendary subject, usually (though not exclusively) in five acts, which uses the chorus actively and includes a ballet, and frequently dramatizes the conflict between private emotion and public, religious, or political responsibility.

I wonder if we ought to make this distinction clear in the lead section of the article? And as the present article refers throughout to the French genre, ought not the correct technical term, "grand opéra" to be used, rather than the wider, accentless version defined above?

Final point, why is the term capitalised throughout the article? – Tim riley (talk) 12:45, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Good points. However, (to give a non-Oxford view :-}) the Cambridge Companion to Grand Opera (2003) begins its preface 'This Companion is about nineteenth-century opera of a certain large-scale type....The association between 'grand opera' and large material resources is an essential aspect of our definition here,one which in fact takes French opera as its focus, though not as its boundary'. The present Wikipedia article seems more or less to hang in with this view, but the proposal to make clear the differences (and congruences) between 'grand opera' and 'grand opéra' is definitely a good one. The Oxford definitions of 'grand opera' as opera without spoken dialogue, even in 'common English usage' look rather suspect to me - Le nozze di Figaro? - Il ritorno d'Ulisse? - it seems to me (if you will pardon my lapse into WP:OR) that to endorse such a definition might be seriously misleading - as for the capital letters they should Definitely Go - and when I have the time, if no one else has tackled these issues, I am willing to have a go myself.--Smerus 16:16, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

* I agree with Smerus (who has made a lot of contributions to the present article).

* As I've said elsewhere, it is quite wrong to refer to any opera, even a serious opera, which doesn't have spoken dialogue as a "grand opera" and the article should say so in a prominent position. "Grand Opera" (not "Grand Opéra") in Warrack and West's Oxford Dictionary of Opera is defined as "The term normally given to the genre that flourished in Paris from the early 1820s ...". No other meaning is given there.

* The article's title has been changed back and forth between Grand Opera and Grand Opéra. I think it may even date back to the days when Wikipedia titles couldn't include diacritics and whatnot. I'm assuming that the present title is based on WP:ENGLISH. It does give the French version in the lead, and there are various redirects. I'd be inclined to move it to Grand opera (currently a redirect).

* --GuillaumeTell 17:10, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Cards on the table, I only enquired into this because of Queen Victoria: "You should write a grand opera, Sir Arthur; you would do it so well" (close, but no cigar). Grove permits only "grand opéra" for the French goings-on with ballets. But as the sources mentioned above confirm the usual English usage of "grand opera" as opposed to "grand opéra" I think it is short-changing our readers to pretend that the term has only one use, and we are duty bound to point out the distinction in the preamble to the present article. Tim riley (talk) 19:02, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

I think that the article Lead should clarify that in common English usage, people use the term "grand opera" to refer to an "imprecise" group of serious operas beyond those included in the genre 'grand opéra'. Smerus agrees above that "the proposal to make clear the differences (and congruences) between 'grand opera' and 'grand opéra' is definitely a good one." I agree with the Oxford definitions above (especially the second one). I bet that 99% of people (in the US at least) would be surprised if you told them that "grand operas" have ballets in them. They just use "grand opera" to mean a serious full-scale opera, with no dialogue. I think this is what Queen Victoria meant. Opera experts know better, but this is an encyclopedia, and so we are obligated to describe this distinction very clearly to readers who search for the term. It seems to me that it would be very helpful to use the accent when discussing the genre and not to use the accent when discussing the "imprecise" term understood by the public. -- Ssilvers (talk) 21:24, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

I've made a start on the lede, and invite comments/edits; but does this not now mean, if take to its logical consequence, that we need Category:Grand opéras as a sub-category of Category:Grand operas?--Smerus 21:27, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

The lead is greatly improved: many thanks! What you say about a sub-category is indeed the logical consequence, but for myself I'd take a pragmatic view and leave things as they are. The article now seems to me to meet the needs of both constituencies, general and specialist. But I don't want to interfere in the counsels of the opera project. Tim riley (talk) 07:58, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Following Ssilvers's remarks, would I be right in thinking that the imprecise use of the term "grand opera" is a case of "We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language"? I can't recall having heard or seen any use of the term in Britain except in its precise/correct use and wonder whether "especially in America" might be added to "It may also be used colloquially in an imprecise sense to refer to 'serious opera without spoken dialogue'". --GuillaumeTell 09:45, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Good gracious, no! Not only Queen Victoria: see The Musical Times, 1 December 1900, p. 786; The Times, 26 May 1891, p. 10; Sammelbände der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft, 3 May 1902 etc. See also the three Oxford reference works mentioned above. Tim riley (talk) 10:21, 27 August 2011 (UTC) Afterthought: those are rather elderly examples, but for more recent uses of the term in its wider, non-French sense, see The Guardian: here, here and here; to see it applied to Peter Grimes by Andrew Clements or Die Meistersinger by Fiona Maddocks also see The Guardian. (I'm sure the same is true of The Times, but it is cut off by its paywall). Tim riley (talk) 11:08, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

The Harvard Dictionary of Music (2003 edition) says "Grand opera. In 19th-century France, a work suitable for performance at the Paris Opéra. This implied a serious work on a historical subject, in four or five acts, including chorus and ballet, with the text fully set musically (that is, without spoken dialogue). An example is Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots. More loosely, the term is used to indicate any opera making lavish use of musical and theatrical resources." The OED says: "Serious opera without spoken dialogue." --Robert.Allen (talk) 07:47, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

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