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How is this an opera? Who composed the music? Which conductors and orchestras performed it? The page at UMich calls it "a play, interspersed with songs", but many plays are like that without being called 'opera'. I suggest to remove all opera-related categories and project banners. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 04:24, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Michael Bednarek: the play is described as a "comic opera" sourced in the lead to Dillon. I checked, and on page 410 Dillon states Rather than a domestic, sentimental tragedy, Slaves in Algiers is a comic opera that argues for the public and political, rather than private and domestic, role of women. From the lede of the article comic opera: Comic opera, sometimes known as light opera, is a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending and often including spoken dialogue. As I see it, the genre is a captivity narrative and the form is a comic opera. I'm not sure about alternatives. We can't call it a musical comedy or burlesque because it predates those forms. You may be right, though, that while historically a comic opera it may not be right to call it an opera by today's understanding of the word. So it is a comic opera, but not an opera. Does that sound right?
Categories should be restricted to 'defining characteristics' of the subject. Generally, things which are lede-worthy should be considered for categories. However, the only category I found for comic operas is Category:English comic operas. (That there isn't a category for American comic operas just means that there aren't enough articles to populate such a category.) I wouldn't revert you if you replaced the opera categories with more general theatre/play categories.
WikiProject Banners should be used if it is likely that the WikiProject will support development of an article. That is incredibly subjective, and I honestly don't see it happening a lot with low-importance low-popularity articles. I would have no objection to the removal of WP Opera, Human rights and one of Theatre or Musical theatre. – Reidgreg (talk) 11:55, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for that thorough response. If a professor of literature, Dillon, calls a work an 'opera', there may be a good chance that she means that in a more colloquial sense, like 'space opera', 'soap opera', just as 'operatic' is often used to denote something of grand or melodramatic effect. OTOH, the scope of Wikipedia:WikiProject Opera is clearly the genre described in the article Opera, or as you pointed out, Comic opera. Essential ingredients are a composer, a score, an orchestra, singers. I skimmed through the text of Slaves, and I count 7 songs. As I wrote above, this appears very similar to many other plays; Shakespeare and other Elizabethans, Goethe, Brecht come to mind. Considering all this, I still maintain that the opera categories and banner (and Musical Theatre) are inappropriate and misleading. If no other editors comment here, I will trim categories and banners in a couple of days. You are of course welcome to do that earlier. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:27, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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