There is a remaining issue with false positive detection of some “opera” works. For example both Beethoven’s sixth symphony “Pastoral” and Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” both set OVERALL_WORK=“Fantasia”. This is a consequence of a bad entry in MusicBrainz which erroneously listed both as “parts of” a work for the “Fantasia” soundtrack:
https://musicbrainz.org/work/74e65a9e-608d-4097-b238-c1bb6536ce7c .
This particular instance has been fixed in MusicBrainz, and should disappear with the next rebuild of Albunack. However it is far from the only instance of classical works being listed as “Parts of” soundtracks. MB recently created a new relationship type “is included in” to replace “is part of” which should slowly alleviate the problem in time as the musicbrainz database gets corrected. However I fear we should expect persistent misidentifications as an opera type ongoing, as film soundtracks are added to MusicBrainz by naive editors. Recursing up a “part of” chain in Musicbrainz will always be an unreliable means of detecting opera type works until the stopping point is correctly identified.
However there is a simple algorithmic fix to SongKong which would sort this out for once and for all by testing the Musicbrainz “Work Type” field. I propose that only a work with a type of
- Ballet
- Mass
- Opera
- Operetta
- Oratorio
- Song-cycle
should be considered for an opera type work. The list could even be customizable, making this a fairly low-maintenance solution.
This would also solve other outstanding misidentification issues in my library as for example, the WORK_TYPE of both
The Anna Magdalena Notebook and Two Piano Sonatas, op. 27 is null. These are really “Collections” not works (in the more general musical terminology sense), and need to be excluded too.