Talk:Théâtre des Nouveautés

Accuracy

I tried to clean up a rough translation of the French version, but I may have introduced incorrect facts through misunderstanding. Someone should fact-check the article as it now stands. Also, I did not understand what was even being said in some cases. Serious cleanup needed by someone who speaks French.--Foobarnix (talk) 03:55, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for adding so much more to this article. I tried to clean up some of the details for the Salle de la Bourse using New Grove Opera. I think it makes more sense now, but I can sure see why those French pronoun references were so confusing! Plus there seems to have been an error of fact in the French article concerning when the Opéra-Comique left the Salle Feydeau vs. the Salle Ventadour. --Robert.Allen (talk) 00:10, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Théâtre des Nouveautés

Note: The following discussion has been moved here from User talk:Robert.Allen. --Robert.Allen (talk) 06:29, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

I've just had a look at this — a Paris theatre article that seems to be about a name followed through a series of locations. (Other theatre articles are about locations that are followed through a series of names (as indicated in the infobox and the coordinates), e.g. Théâtre de l'Athénée or Théâtre Déjazet.) I think this is confusing. What is your view on this? --Kleinzach 03:32, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Some articles we have are clearly about companies that may have used more than one venue, e.g., Paris Opera or Opéra-Comique. Others are clearly about venues, e.g., Salle Le Peletier, Palais Garnier. I think Théâtre de l'Athénée is one of the latter, although it is a bit more complex, since two very different theatres existed successively on that site. Théâtre des Nouveautés is different since it is about several different companies that used the same name and different venues, similar to Théâtre de la Renaissance, but is even more complex since the subsequent companies that used Salle de la Bourse are described. The Salle de la Bourse is often referred to as the Théâtre des Nouveautéa because of the company that first occupied the theatre; for example, it appears that way in the works list for Ambroise Thomas in New Grove Opera. I changed that name in List of operas by Ambroise Thomas to Salle de la Bourse because that's what Wild and Charlton did in their 2005 book. When we don't have a lot of information about the theatre as a building, I think it makes sense to redirect Salle de la Bourse to this article until we have enough independent information specific to the building that we create a separate article about the Salle de la Bourse at the redirect page. (And this may not ever happen.) I also resorted to this stratagem for Salle Feydeau which currently redirects to the article Théâtre Feydeau, a name which can refer to the company itself, or the building which the company built. Many musicologists, e.g., Fauser and Everist in their 2009 symposium volume, besides Wild and Charlton, seem to be gravitating to using names with Salle for the venues, and names with Théâtre for companies, but this does not always work, e.g. the Théâtre de la Gaîté was never referred to as the Salle de la Gaîté. One might possibly use Salle du Théâtre de la Gaîté, but this gets cumbersome, and could refer to more than one building. In any case, this article is rather similar to the short article "Théâtre des Nouveautés" in New Grove Opera, except that it covers a longer time span reaching to the current day. I do not have much knowledge of the current theatre, but it might be a good idea not to use the infobox, and to rewrite the lead and picture caption to try to make it clearer what the article is about. --Robert.Allen (talk) 04:30, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

I went ahead and made some small changes to the lead which I hope makes it better. I left the infobox. I think it may be OK. See what you think. --Robert.Allen (talk) 05:24, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

The infobox on Théâtre des Nouveautés actually contracts the article. One says the story starts in 1921, the other places it a century earlier. I think it would be better to split the article. Short articles never confused anyone. I'd split it myself, but you are more familiar with this material since you have been working on it. In general, I think articles about single location theatres (that may change name) are fine, also articles unambiguously about companies/people not places are OK, but the Nouveautés type really are problematic. --Kleinzach 05:50, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure I agree. New Grove Opera lumps them together. Also, this avoids the disambiguation problems by putting them all in one place. It's a very short article as it is. I'm not sure I would favor splitting up this article or Théâtre de la Renaissance, unless they are expanded. (Not sure what you mean about the Infobox, I'll take a look at it.) --Robert.Allen (talk) 05:57, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

The infobox only seems to be about the contemporary theatre. I don't see any problem with it, except maybe the fact the co-ordinates are place in the upper right for the entire article. On second thought maybe it is not a bad idea to split the article. Let me sleep on it. --Robert.Allen (talk) 08:06, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Grove Opera's (original) method is to treat the theatres city by city, but that's clearly not a solution we can adopt. I'd prefer it if you can split the article as I really have other things to do. This is more your area than mine. --Kleinzach 09:14, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Somehow i thought it was your idea to split it up. I'm happy with it the way it is for now. Although I think you are correct in principle about splitting the article up, you are incorrect to say that I have any special knowledge of these theatres. I relied on New Grove Opera and Google Maps for the location of the Rue Vivienne at the Paris Bourse, and Wild and Charlton's book uses the name "Salle de la Bourse" as the venue for the premieres of Ambroise Thomas' operas comiques while New Grove calls it "Nouveautés". It was while working on List of operas by Ambroise Thomas that I looked at this article in the first place so that we could link to it, so I added the redirect for "Salle de la Bourse" and did some cleanup here based on that info. Otherwise I have no other info other than what was already here and at the Wiképedia français. Like you say, this is not a high priority, but thanks for your comments in any case. You've always been very helpful. --Robert.Allen (talk) 16:57, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

To Kleinzach & Robert.Allen: I think both of you are very brave and clever to take on the incredibly confusing issue of overlapping Paris theatre names, shifting theatre venues, and wandering theatre companies. The information above is enlightening. I have an idea: Why not write an article which includes the points made above. Then, every theatre for which name/venue confusion is an issue would say (perhaps in a See also or Special notes section), "See the article Paris theatre names: ambiguities and confusions" (Or whatever we decide to call this article). In any case, good job on this.--Foobarnix (talk) 23:06, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

These questions are all potentially soluble, since the info does exist. It's just a matter of digging it up. Foobarnix's idea of an article is a good one. In fact, we have used lists many times before in order to identify and distinguish between people, places or whatever. In this case we already have List of theatres and opera houses in Paris, List of entertainment venues and cabarets in Paris, and List of demolished entertainment venues in Paris. I think we just need to uprate these in a new, properly cross-referenced list. Merging the existing texts could be the way to start this. --Kleinzach 02:52, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Correcting French-language encoded names etc.

I've found some bizarre things here: proper names with French language tags (e.g. Gilbert Dupé), addresses given in French rather than linked to the corresponding English articles (e.g. Paris IXe), Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Martin) etc.. I've made basic corrections to try to bring this in line with other WP articles. --Kleinzach 15:04, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Template:Link-interwiki is very useful for redlinks where articles exist in the French Wikipedia. When these articles are created in the English Wikipedia, the links can be converted to regular links. I favor using it, since it encourages translations of the French articles. --Robert.Allen (talk) 18:25, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

These interwiki links are also useful to alert the reader to the existence of an article at the other language Wikipedia. The superscript link to the other language is no more intrusive than a ref tag. (I've noticed that some editors link to the other language articles directly using the 2-letter language prefix, but this results in an unpleasant surprise for the reader who is not expecting an article in a different language.) I suggest that If you feel this template is too bizarre to be used, that you should propose that the template be deleted and get consensus for that. Otherwise, you should leave it in place, when another editor has added it. --Robert.Allen (talk) 06:22, 21 August 2011 (UTC)