Adding a piano part to an orchestral score

I’m working on an opera arrangement and was wondering what the best tactic is in Dorico for adding a piano part just for a few recitatives. Could I use the choir staves temporarily for this, as they’re not necessary at that moment (and to avoid score bloat), or would it be better to create a separate piano grand staff and just hide it when not necessary? Or create something like ossia staves for those sections?

I would add a separate piano part and use the option that it is hidden when there is no music in it.
Then you have automatically the correct MIDI output and the correct parts.
Regards, Felix

Are these recits separate flows? If so, it would be easy to select the piano part in Setup mode, and then uncheck the flows in which you don’t want it to appear.

If you’re not using flows for this, I’d recommend it. That’s precisely what they’re designed for. One of the strengths of flows is the ability to use flexible instrumentation between different sections of music in a larger work.

Thanks for the reactions. One of the reasons why I haven’t used flows for this is that the music is pretty much through-composed, and using flows would suppress the cautionary key changes and time signature changes at the end of each flow. I know that the idea of showing these cautionaries has been discussed here at length but the development team was pretty adamant about the present functioning of flows.

Makes sense. In that case, Felix’s suggestion is best.