Wikipedia:WikiProject Opera/Category guidelines

This page is a guide to categorizing opera-related articles. Categories are sometimes implemented on Wikipedia in an ad hoc fashion, and can be erratic, with new ones appearing all the time. The Opera category tree contains all the currently existing categories and their sub-categories. (You can view the sub-categories by clicking on the [+] next to the category title.)

Operas

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Basic categories

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All opera title articles belong in:

Operas are further categorized minimally by:

Composer
Genre
Language
Year of premiere

Further categories

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Other categories include Operas by setting; Operas by world premiere location; One-act operas; Unfinished operas ; Lost operas; Operas by source (for operas whose libretti are based on plays, novels, films, etc.)

Category order

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In practice a single opera title article will have many category tags at the foot of the page. The order in which these appear generally starts with the most specific and ends with the most general. For example, Tosca belongs to the following categories:

Category:Operas by Giacomo Puccini|Category:Verismo operas|Category:Italian-language operas|Category:1900 operas|Category:Operas

For typographical reasons stub tags go two line spaces after category tags

Opera singers

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In addition to general biographical categories, opera singers are categorized by:

Nationality

Category:Opera singers by nationality

Voice

Other opera people

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Articles which don't fall under any of the below topics can always be included (temporarily) in Category:Opera. For further possible categories, see the full category tree for all opera-related articles.

Organizations and venues (When adding these, please check each category for the appropriate sub-category, if any)

Opera terms

Audio and video recordings (on 78, LP, CD, DVD etc.)

Publishers
Publications
Lists

Category sorting

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To ensure that articles are listed in the correct order on their category pages, the {{DEFAULTSORT}} tag needs to added at the beginning of the article's list of categories.

  • The titles of articles are sorted omitting the definite or indefinite article such as "A", "The", "Le", "La", "Les", "Der", "Die", "Das", etc. For example La naissance d'Osiris requires {{DEFAULTSORT:Naissance d'Osiris}}. That means that the opera will file under N and not under L, although the actual article title ("La naissance d'Osiris") will appear in the Category listing under N.
  • The default sort title should always start with a capital letter, as lower-case initial letters are filed after upper-case
  • If there's a special character or accent in the title, the default sort title should not contain the special character/accent, for a similar reason. For example, if "Zéphire" isn't changed to "Zephire", it would file after "Zwerg".
  • People have to be sorted in the same way, e.g. {{DEFAULTSORT:Verdi, Giuseppe}}, otherwise Verdi will appear under "G" rather than "V".