In the eighteenth century, the debate on reception focused on the complex relationship between theoretics and stage practice, identifying Italian theatre as a constantly evolving area, rich in artistic and cultural ferments, and which was rendered dynamic by the unresolved tensions of the age. The fertile exchange of ideas between the faculties of the intellect and the potential of instinct, between the arguments of Enlightenment rationality and pre-romantic emotional impulses, marked the unfolding phases of reflection on the power of the theatre to persuade the viewers, kindle their strong involvement, and stimulate complex debates on the aesthetic and moral ends of art, the modes of presentation and the paradigms of drama. The analysis of the nature of passions, the revision of the Aristotelian canons, the inquiry into tragic pleasure and its imaginative and fantastic components progressively identified dramatic art as a veritable communicative context, the focal point of the most momentous theoretical questions. Within this complex panorama, Antonio Conti’s reflections stand as a critical and autonomous observation point, responding to the two souls of the century - the rational and the emotive one, and intertwining the numerous debates on the objectivies and nature of the art of theatre.