Talk:Sylvia (ballet)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sylvia (ballet) is within the scope of WikiProject Classical music, which aims to improve, expand, cleanup, and maintain all articles related to classical music, that aren't covered by other classical music related projects. Please read the guidelines for writing and maintaining articles. To participate, you can edit this article or visit the project page for more details.
This article has been listed as a featured article.
This article is supported by the Compositions task force.
Featured article star Sylvia (ballet) is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do.
Main Page trophy This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on September 21, 2005.
To-do list for Sylvia (ballet): edit · history · watch · refresh

[edit] Big stuff

[edit] This article sure wasnt made a Featured Article for its history

There is an entire evolution of this ballet's history left out - its 1901 production in St. Petersburg for the Imperial Ballet. It is this version that served as the inspiration for Ashton's production, and it is not even brought up once on this web page. - The Royal Ballet's production of 1952 is NOT the production responsible for this the title changing from "Sylvia ou La Nymphe de Diane" to "Sylvia" - it was the Imperial Ballet's production of 1901 that started this tradition.

It seems that everyone on Wikipedia that says "yay or nay" as to whether or not an article should be featured is OBSESSED with citations, and it seems that the worth of an article is based on this. Likewise if an article exploits all of the really unessecary Wikipedia features such as wiki quotes, etc. then of course that will make an article even more worthy of being featured - Im sure had there not been any citations included in article it never would have become featured. Reagarding citations, many of the the ones included in this article take one to a link that then takes one to a review of a performance, many of which talk very little about this ballet's history. So, if citiations are what is supposed to "authenticate" the information provided in the article - or simply give referance to a source - then why are all of the citations links to reviews of performances? How does one know that the information provided by the reviewer is accurate?

In the 'Style' section of this article the entire paragraph pretty much violates the whole neutrality policy.

There is not one shread of information included in this article that one cant find by simply putting "Sylvia Delibes Ballet" into a google search.

Mrlopez2681 15:30, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

As the main contributor to this article, and proponent of its accuracy and comprehensiveness, I shall try to address your criticisms.
  1. First of all "the entire evolution of this ballet's history" has not been left out. Much of it had to be omitted; not every single production of Sylvia can get its own paragraph. Concerning the 1901 production: I did not know that Ashton was inspired by the 1901 production, nor that the name was shortened that early (I seem to have made the very bad assumption that it was changed in 1952). If you have sources for these claims, we can add that, and even give the 1901 production a paragraph if you like.
  2. Your criticism of the FAC process should be placed on the FAC talk page. This is not the place for that.
  3. Now to deal with the citations. I tried to cite all of the facts as best I could, though sometimes I had to use online reviews. I also used the ABT PLAYBILL, The Cambridge Companion to the Saxophone, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, The Ballet Annual, and the San Francisco Ballet Magazine. If you think some more facts are spurious, say which. If any source is deemed unreliable, it shall be removed.
  4. I also disagree with your assessment of the "Style" section. I don't think it violates NPOV policy, though you should feel free to quote any particular statment which pushes a non-neutral point of view. -- Rmrfstar 03:50, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Apologies

I apologize Rmrfstar if I came acorss as evil......very sorry. After reading my above statements I realized how negative it reads, the majority of which was NOT directed at you at all. Maybe you didnt take it that way but I felt my statement did in fact sound as though directed at the main contributor to the article, which is you.

Fortunately "Sylvia" is a ballet that has not had a zillion different revisions like "Le Corsaire". Of course there have been quite a few stagings, but not revissions - to the best of my knowledge, only 3 major versions - the original production, the Petersburg Production of 1901 (who mounted this staging and all the other details escapes me right now, but I have sent emails to collegues in search of Answer), and finally Sir Frederick Ashton's production for the Royal Ballet. Mrlopez2681 04:35, 16 May 2006 (UTC)