Talk:The Count of Luxembourg

Categories

Shouldn't this article at least be part of the Category:Compositions by Franz Lehár, and possibly of Category:1909 compositions? -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 11:27, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't think so. I think the musicals categories are there instead. See also Der Graf von Luxemburg, which is the same "composition" and is categorized in the opera tree. Compare similar operettas, like The Merry Widow, or The Dollar Princess, none of which are in the classical music tree. -- Ssilvers (talk) 14:45, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

I assume your "I don't think so" refers to my second proposal (Category:1909 compositions) — fair enough. What about Category:Compositions by Franz Lehár? -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 02:54, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't have an objection. -- Ssilvers (talk) 04:42, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

• It's not only a category question. The opening sentence states "The Count of Luxembourg is an operetta in two acts with English lyrics and libretto..." Yet, it's categorized as a musical and formatted like an article for a musical, e.g. an infobox that refers to "book" rather than libretto. It's very confusing to the reader. If this article is to treat this work as a musical derived from an operetta, then the lede needs to be changed. If it's going to treat this as an operetta which is the adaptation of another operetta then the categories need to changed. Voceditenore (talk) 18:05, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Alternately, should it be merged into Der Graf von Luxemburg, so that these related works are described together? They were originally together, if I recall correctly, but they were split when an editor objected to adding information about the English-language adaptation. See also The Merry Widow and The Dollar Princess for starters. I estimate that there are a few dozen of these highly-successful English-language adaptations of European operettas. When they have been split from the original work, an idea that I never liked, I have treated them like musicals, because then the editor mentioned above was less likely to delete material from them. Voce, now that you have been doing some editing in this area, I would value your advice (and assistance) if you think there is a better model. All the best! -- Ssilvers (talk) 21:20, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

I've looked at the history, and this article never had anything about Der Graf von Luxemburg except to say that this work was adapted from it. Nevertheless, when this article was created in 2006, a redirect page was simultaneously created which redirected Der Graf von Luxemburg here. [1]. In 2007 the redirect was made into its own article [2]. I don't think a merger would be suitable at this point. The original is considerably different and is still frequently performed today, unlike this one (although it was very successful in its day). I know the boundaries between opera/operetta/musical are blurry, but how do reliable sources describe this version? If a goodly number describe it as a musical adapted from an operetta fine, but then it should be explicitly described as such in the lede. If they describe it as an English language operetta adapted from a German language one, then it shouldn't be written about, categorized, and formatted as it were a musical. These decisions should never be taken simply to avoid deletion of material by another editor. That does a great disservice to the reader and impacts on the encyclopedic value of the article. Voceditenore (talk) 13:27, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

It's Lehar. I think it's an operetta. Here is where the opera cat was removed: [3]. Here is an article by the adapter discussing its adaptation from German to English. Note that it refers to all operettas as musicals: [4]. You can see how the line between operetta and musicals is blurred further, as part of the adaptation involved cutting some finale music and replacing it with dialogue. -- Ssilvers (talk) 15:12, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Operetta style in article

From the Hood quote it certainly looks as though it's altered enough (and both versions were successful enough) for each to have a separate article - that's one issue. (Although I do wonder about the 1983 Sadler's Wells version. If it had a new book and lyrics, it clearly wasn't Hood and Ross's version - so is it a version of Count, or of Graf? Does anyone know about the music?)

As for the other - I'd say it's definitely an operetta. Unless we can prove some substantial alteration of the music - style, vocal range, whatnot - it's the music from an operetta, and the show is an operetta. (Don't get me started on Category:Musicals based on operas. Oy.)

On an unrelated note, doesn't anyone who's already worked on this article know how the plot resolves? "Things work out okay and there's pretty music" isn't quite what one hopes to get out of a synopsis. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Roscelese (talk • contribs) 06:02, 15 January 2011

I've been collecting stuff in preparation for expanding the long-languishing Der Graf von Luxemburg, including more plot detail, which I'll add to it later today. I suspect the gist is not radically different from this one, although this one obviously has more characters and possibly extra sub-plots? Re the 1983 Sadler's Wells version. It is definitely not an adaptation or new version of Hood and Ross's version. It was a translation of the original operetta and apparently very faithful to it, with the original three acts. It even included music from the 1937 'definitive' Berlin version of Graf.

In the Graf article, I'm also going to include information about the other adaptations. One Spanish version by Vicente Lleó Balbastre, El conde le Luxemburgo, made pretty radical changes, including re-arranging Lehar's music and adding extra music of his own. He also turned it into a one-act zarzuela, El conde del Embudo (The Count of the Funnel), even more loosely based on the original. The French version, Le comte de Luxembourg is fairly faithful to the original, although the two protagonists' names are changed (for some unknown reason): Angèle→Suzanne, René→Fernand.

As for the lede, I agree that it's probably most accurate to call The Count an operetta, but this article needs a lot more research and better sources. Has anyone actuallly got the Andrew Lamb article listed in the references? That would help. It appears from the date to be related to the Sadler's Wells production, but may well have information about the Hood version.

The categorization in cases like this is very headache-inducing. ;-) Not sure what to do about it, apart from adding Category:Compositions by Franz Lehár. Maybe this issue could be re-visited once The Count of Luxembourg is expanded and more fully sourced? Voceditenore (talk) 07:19, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Expansion+Merge to Der Graf von Luxemburg

Do you have e-mail enabled? I can e-mail you the JSTOR article. (Sorry - I'd do it myself but I'm working on at least three new articles right now.) I'll also move the bit about Sadler's Wells to the Graf page. Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 07:35, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

We need to at least briefly note here that there is a newer English version of the same name, so I've restored a brief mention. Also, by the way, the New Sadler's Well Opera has nothing to do with ENO. New Sadler's Wells died in 1989. The Sadler's Wells Opera Company had earlier become ENO. New Sadler's Wells was then formed in the 1980s to perform at Sadler's Wells Theatre. It did well, and made several good recordings, but then left the theatre, toured a bit and died a quiet death. -- Ssilvers (talk) 16:02, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Roscelese, if you e-mail me the JSTOR article, I'll go through it and beef up the article. Thanks! -- Ssilvers (talk) 16:29, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Done. I also added newspaper and other refs. All the main sources (Ganzl, Lamb, Traubner, etc.) treat the German and English versions together. So should we. All of the information here really belongs in the main article (and nearly all of it is already there), except the song list, which is not much to sacrifice in order to combine the two articles into one that describes the whole history of this piece worldwide. BTW, there were also French, Italian and probably other versions and who knows how extensive the revisions were in those. I would vote to merge. -- Ssilvers (talk) 01:42, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

I think the arguments for a merge would be similar to those for the incorporation of Falka into Le droit d'ainesse with its own section, which I was in favour of (discussions here). The relative importance of the two versions is somewhat reversed from that in Le droit d'ainesse. In this case, while the Count of Luxembourg was quite popular in its day, it is only rarely performed (if ever) now, while Der Graf von Luxemburg is still very much in the repertoire in German-speaking countries. The proportional weight of coverage in a merged article needs to reflect that. Voceditenore (talk) 11:37, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Brissard

The following was a reader's comment by User:RayKay2 which had been mistakenly placed in the article itself. I'm transferring it here. Voceditenore (talk) 05:13, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

[A reader's comment: Some of Hood's assertions here are puzzling. He claims the entire role of Brissard was invented and introduced in the London production. However, Brissard and Juliet are the main subplot characters in the original German libretto, and have several important songs. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Graf_von_Luxemburg.]