Talk:Libretto

Illustrations

I wonder if the picture is appropriate. What does it add to our understanding of libretto? Maybe it could be placed lower in the article under a subtitle about famous librettists.

--David A.

That's a good point. I didn't notice until now that someone had inserted a portrait of a particular person. It makes it look as if that's the most important or representative librettist. Better to have a sample page from a public-domain printed libretto to show how the text is laid out. I will try to come up with something to substitute for the existing portrait. Mademoiselle Fifi 14:18, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I've replaced that picture and added 4 more to make the illustrations more directly relevant to the text.Voceditenore 12:09, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Musical requirements?

I've removed the following paragraphs that were between Language and Status; it's not clear that the first is an exception (or at least to what), and in the second it's not clear how (or even that) the libretto was changed beyond translation into French. If they make sense to anyone else fell free to put them back...Sparafucil 09:24, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

There have been notable exceptions. George Gershwin's opera Porgy and Bess, for example, is based on DuBose Heyward and Dorothy Heyward's play Porgy, and though about 95% of the opera is sung, the recitatives, which are really large chunks of the play set to music, are in prose, while the formal arias, duets, trios, etc., are in verse.

==Musical requirements==

As different musical traditions developed over time in different places, libretti were sometimes subjected to changes because of local requirements of performance practice. For example, an 18th-century Italian comic opera like Pergolesi's La Serva Padrona was to be sung all the way through in Italy, but in France the recitatives had to be converted into spoken dialogue.

Ballet "libretto"

(Thread copied from Talk:La sonnambula (disambiguation) Voceditenore (talk) 11:31, 9 July 2011 (UTC))

Surely ballets don't have librettos? My limited understanding of ballets (C19 ballets anyway) is that nobody speaks or sings, they just dance. Penguin/Viking says that what Scribe wrote was a scenario, which seems to be the correct word. --GuillaumeTell 21:06, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

They were referred to as librettos, even though no one was singing. They were printed up as little books and given to the audience so they could follow the story in detail. There's more about it here, for example. Voceditenore (talk) 05:55, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Interesting, at least to historians of ballet. But is that usage crystal-clear to present-day users of Wikipedia? The libretto article has "and ballet" tacked on to a list of "opera, operetta, masque, oratorio and cantata, musical..." but this is preceded by "libretto is the text used in an extended musical work" and ballet is not otherwise mentioned in the article. It also says "A libretto is distinct from a synopsis or scenario of the plot, in that the libretto contains all the words and stage directions, while a synopsis summarizes the plot." All of this, except for the inclusion of ballet, is what I (and, I think, most people) mean when we use the word libretto, and when we use the word scenario or synopsis we are referring to a summary of the plot, which is what is contained in the little books handed out at ballet-pantomimes a long time ago. --GuillaumeTell 10:12, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

I agree with you, especially after taking a look at Libretto. I've amended the lede there to reflect this and copied this conversation to Talk:Libretto. Let me know what you think. Voceditenore (talk) 11:31, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

(end of copied thread)

Musicals: libretti or books?

How does the libretto of a musical differ from a "book"? Is the libretto simply the script without the songs, or does libretto refer only to the combination of the book and the lyrics? There's some confusion over how to categorize musicals: we have Category:Musicals by lyricist, Category:Musicals by librettist, and Category:Musicals by author, and we're not sure when to use the librettist category. Help, please? Aristophanes68 (talk) 23:31, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm no expert on musical theatre, but you might find some enlightenment (or not, as the case may be) at Book_(musical_theatre)#Definitions, though not many (if any) assertions there are verified by citations from WP:RS. --GuillaumeTell 00:18, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Yah, I saw that. Kinda helpful, at least in terms of clarifying that libretto = book and lyrics. But there's still a question of how to categorize the authors. I guess the project folks need to discuss this more thoroughly. Thanks, Aristophanes68 (talk) 01:26, 10 July 2011 (UTC)