Hi fellow Doricians !
I have just copied an entire opéra fantastique from Offenbach and I run into a problem I think Dorico handles well, but I can’t get it work the way I want. Can you help me understand the procedure ?
There is a bar of a recitativo, the piano is written in 4/4 but the singer has a lot of notes… I tried creating a free measurement for the singer, but then this “free” bar goes beyond the rythmical boundaries of the measured bar of the piano. Do I need to “fake” it as I used to do in Sibelius — when I got a chance to use it, but this was a long time ago 
? The workaround was to use as many hidden tuplets as needed…
Hi Marc, I’m trying to understand, but I’m not sure that I get the situation fully or could help much without seeing it. Could you maybe post a snapshot of the measure from Offenbach? …would be interesting to take a look. Thanks, Kevin
Dear Kevin,
Yes, you are right… Even in french, it would not be easy to describe it. A picture is worth a thousand words !
Instead of a free bar, I’d do it as a tuplet and hide both number and bracket. The ratio would be, using 8th notes, 19:8. I know you mentioned something of the sort, but it’s a single tuplet and it looks really good in Dorico
Here’s what it looks like. I left the signpost
Thank you Claude !
I imagined Dorico could let me do that without the workaround of a hidden tuplet, but rethinking of it, if there were such function, it would be actually this workaround automated. So I thank you for doing the math while I was sleeping 
I must admit that it does really look good !
Claude’s solution is really cool. I tried it as open meter and got this:
There is still a problem that the second Cs of the tremolos come too soon. Unfortunately the offset doesn’t work yet and there is no way to drag them unless there’s something I don’t know!? But using the open meter it was very simple. For the fermata, I used the hack of copying it in as text (shift-X) since I couldn’t suppress Dorico from adding the fermata to all voices. Likewise, to have Récit appear above the singer’s staff I used shift-X. If anyone knows how to do both without a hack or, using open meter, offset those Cs, I would be very curious!
All best,
Kevin
