Wikipedia:WikiProject Opera/Category guidelines

(N.B. for the purposes of Wikipedia (and indeed other encyclopedias such as Grove), operettas are considered a subcategory of operas, so, for example, The Merry Widow is in Category:Operas as well as Category:Operettas.)

In practice a single opera title article will have many category tags at the foot of the page. The order in which these appear should start with the most specific and end 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:Operas]]

Please note that for typographical reasons stubs go two line spaces after category tags.

Composers, critics, directors, librettists and managers

All opera composers belong in Category:Opera composers. (Separate categories for composers of different genres of opera are no longer used.)

Category:Opera critics • Category:Opera directors • Category:Opera librettists • Category:Opera managers

Singers

Singers are categorized by nationality, ie, Category:French opera singers etc, and by voice:

Category:Operatic sopranos • Category:Operatic mezzo-sopranos • Category:Operatic contraltos • Category:Operatic countertenors • Category:Operatic tenors • Category:Operatic baritones • Category:Operatic bass-baritones • Category:Operatic basses

Other categories

There are three main categories for opera organizations: Category:Opera houses (sub-categorised by country), Category:Opera companies and Category:Opera festivals. (Opera houses may also be found in other categories, such as city, e.g. Category:Milan, and buildings, e.g. Category:Buildings and structures in Vienna.) Associations etc. are under Category:Opera organizations.

Opera terms are categorized under: Category:Opera terminology. Audio and video recordings of opera on 78, LP, CD, DVD etc. are categorized under: Category:Opera recordings. Publishers are under Category:Opera publishers, and publications under Category:Opera publications. Topics which don't fall under any of the above can always be included (temporarily) in Category:Opera. Lists of opera-related items are categorised in Category:Opera-related lists.

There is also a partially-implemented family of categories taking the form [[Category:YYYY operas]]; these form sub-categories of [[Category:NNth century operas]]. These are usually years of first performances.

(Forms of Chinese opera are listed under Category:Performing arts not opera.)

Category sorting

Alphabetical order in the listing of operas/people

The titles of articles are sorted omitting the definite or indefinite article such as "A", "The", "Le", "La", "Les", "Der", "Die", "Das", etc. This is done using a "Default sort" tag, which is placed before the categories. 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.

Two other points here: first, the default sort title should always start with a capital letter, as lower-case initial letters are filed after upper-case Z; second, if there's a special character or accent early in the title, the default sort title should not contain the special character/accent, for a similar reason. So, in the same category, if "Zéphire" isn't changed to "Zefire", 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'.