ABSTRACT
The battle between traditional and new stagings is one of the oldest topics of Verdian discourse. Arguments pro and con have been made for decades on behalf of each side of this virtually sectarian dispute. Since the debate usually collapses into impassioned embraces of shopworn, pre-formulated positions, it is difficult to imagine that further airings of the topic are going to change many minds. In addition, as David Levin notes, the new availability of the emphatically prescriptive Ricordi disposizioni sceniche only heightens the issues at stake, leaving us «suspended between two equally unappealing alternatives», the «deferential» or the «defiant» model of interpretation. 1 Even while calling for «a more nuanced conception of mise-en-scène» 2 - an appeal with which one can scarcely disagree – and notwithstanding a few caveats scattered about, the burden of Levin’s argument appears to center around the idea of aligning the deferential model with an absence of thought («Va, pensiero»), with an operatic culture of thought-less reiterations of what Mike Ashman called «historically informed fourthwall naturalism». 3
