A burgeoning interest in music theory beginning in the 1960s led scholars to settle new empires, among them nineteenth-century Italian opera. Increasing sophistication of operatic analysis has been indebted to what Thomas Christensen has called “presentist” music theory, for which the craft of the critic/theorist provides a key to principles of order and value, and, by extension, an analogue to technological progress. In the early days of the academic bull market for Verdi's stock, even Pierluigi Petrobelli, a commentator not aligned to the Anglo-American theoretical establishment, observed:

By suggesting that the “determining power” of “formal principles” is nested in a web of “complex relations,” Petrobelli posits a fertile line of investigation that seems partly to attribute the “amazing richness” of Verdi's scores to immutable laws – by implication, deeply buried and ingenious ones – waiting to be discovered by perspicacious scholars with the right tools. Is there a secret method similar to that “discovered” by Alfred Lorenz in the works of Wagner, one which will reveal the craft behind the magic?