Style / Release Group - MusicBrainz says to group releases together when some of them have additional bonus content. I don’t see anything in it about highlights/excerpts releases though, where some releases have significantly fewer tracks and/or shorter excerpts from tracks. E.g., Release group “Manon Lescaut” by Giacomo Puccini; Mirella Freni, Plácido Domingo, Renato Bruson, Kurt Rydl, Robert Gambill, Chorus of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Philharmonia Orchestra, Giuseppe Sinopoli - MusicBrainz has both “Manon Lescaut” with 34 tracks and “Manon Lescaut (Highlights)” with 20 tracks. Should that be split into two release groups, or kept together?
Good question! It’s interesting that the Style Guidelines don’t answer it, because it is a common pattern. Looking for examples, I can see
- release-group/3247 "Madama Butterfly (1966 studio cast) has four complete 34-43 track, 2-CD Releases and four 8-20 track, single-CD Releases.
- release-group/3f54 “Carmen” (1963 studio cast, Leontyn Price in title role) has five 52-track Releases, three “Highlights” Releases of 19, 15, and 10 tracks.
But on the other hand,
- release-group/6dd6 “Nabucco” (1965 studio cast) and release-group/77e3 “Nabucco Highlights” both contain recording/fdcb Nabucco: “Va pensiero” (Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves). And, release-group/6dd6 does contain two highlights Releases and three, 31-track (presumably complete) Releases.
This isn’t definitive, but it does provide evidence that opera highlights releases sometimes are included in the same Release Group as complete opera releases.
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We had this dicussion before Highlights releases: same or different RG? , without decisions. In my opinion, for classical and notably for opera (or operetta) I would put them in the same Release group. Whether you choose to have the complete opera (with all the – musically less interesting – recitativos or spoken dialogues) or a highlights version with just all the famous arias and ensembles is basically a matter of personal taste. In any case I feel like owning a Recording of a given performance
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Oh oops. I had searched before posting this, but didn’t see that.