Starting from the basic rules of the game (the framework provided by the rigorous and formalized typology of voices), Lavagetto analyzes Verdi’s librettos using all the tools of linguistics and semiotics in search of their structural and linguistic constants.

The essay, published in 1979 by Garzanti and presented here in a second revised edition with corrections, updates, and additions, leads the reader through the fundamentals of Romantic musical dramaturgy, with fruitful insights of a linguistic, sociological, and historical nature.