Venetian opera experienced considerable growth in the 1680s. Two new theaters opened at San Giovanni Gristostomo and Sant’ Angelo. Together with those already established, these new venues competed for spectators, and offered additional lucrative opportunities for singers, stage designers and composers. Increasingly, young noblemen and women populated the boxes of Venetian opera. In the 1680s, they wrote about their experiences in their diaries and letters with greater respect than in previous decades, as the quality of operatic production increased. On account of the increasing activity of the Ottoman Turks in Hungary, Venice in this decade became something of a regional center for coordinating military strategy, thus increasing the city’s prestige still further. Important diplomats from Saxony, Poland and elsewhere visited the “serene republic” to talk politics. While they arranged their affairs, the authorities spared little expense in entertaining these powerful foreign allies.

In 1679, another new operatic enterprise took root, which was possibly the most elaborate and prestigious of them all. The Villa Contarini hosted several magnificent operatic performances for an invited, noble audience. The Doge’s own son Marco owned this venue, which was located a short drive from Venice in Piazolla, near Padua. At the Villa, noblemen often took part in the operatic performances themselves, riding horses or working machinery. It was here that Ermelinda was performed in 1681. This particular spectacle was mounted in honor of Prince Josef Lubomirski, a Polish visitor. As soon as Lubomirski arrived in Venice, he went to Piazzola to see the opera along with a retinue of several important diplomats. Little else is known of Ermelinda, except that the score – like so many other Venetian operas – was deposited at the famous Marciana National Library, where it survived in obscurity until the present day.

On the face of it, the music and libretto of Ermelinda, by Domenico Freschi and Francesco Maria Piccioli respectively, may seem fairly conventional. Ermelinda’s father Aristeo, hoping to shield her from the temptations of the city, takes her to a distant pastoral retreat. Her lover Prince Ormondo locates her, and unwilling to be separated from the object of his desire, disguises himself as the peasant Clorindo. The local nobleman, Armidoro, has taken a liking to Ermelinda but befriends Clorindo and takes him into his house. Further complicating matters, Ermelinda’s friend Rosaura falls in love with Clorindo herself. Eventually Clorindo is imprisoned, and in order to test Ermelinda’s love, Aristeo and Armidoro test her in a most cruel way: They falsely claim Clorindo is dead in order to see how she will react. Unsurprisingly, she takes the news badly and is about to kill herself when Ormondo suddenly appears, dressed in properly noble attire, and unmasks the ruse.

This synopsis overlooks what is probably the opera’s most fascinating element: Clorindo/Ormondo maintains his disguise by pretending he is mad. As Rosaura increasingly falls in love with him in Act 1, he feigns insanity to dissuade her from acting on her amorous impulses. This additional costume, layered atop his ragged peasant attire, continues in Act 2 as Clorindo violently breaks up Armidoro’s attempted assault on Ermelinda. Clorindo’s sudden and implausible “recovery” from insanity near the end of Act 2 unmasks his disguise, provoking Armidoro to lock him up in prison.

In the seventeenth century, being insane, or “strano” was a sure way to invite a host of unpleasant outcomes. In the sixteenth century, civic authorities decided that the “pazzi” could not live on the streets anymore, and should instead be shut away from public view. In 1561, Pope Pius IV created the Hospital of Santa Maria della Pietà where “all the mad individuals abandoned and deprived of any other help or subsidy may be accepted…in this hospital they may be governed and fed with everything necessary to them.” But these hospitals were not places for rehabilitation or treatment: rather, those who lived there often languished in miserable conditions. The insane were left to “perform” their madness in front of visitors who came to the hospitals to puzzle and marvel at the bizarre variety of mental delusions on display. The writer Tomaso Garzoni was one such sightseer, who recorded his impressions in the century before Ermelinda. For Garzoni, the insane asylum was a kind of “Teatro del strano” or, “theater of the strange.”

Clorindo’s performance of madness, therefore, might be thought of itself as a kind of theater, nested within the vivid frame that opera already provides. Even the music contributes to his disguise. Clorindo’s bizarre arietta “T’adoro si ma nó” (“I adore you yes, but no I don’t”) at the end of Act 1 lurches ahead, starts and stops, and stutters unpredictably above a bass line that drives repeatedly to B-flat. The brief piece features a middle section that barely has time to cadence in g minor before whiplashing the listener abruptly back into the home key. It is an odd piece that conveys a sense of frenetic repetition and bizarre obsession that could be read as a vivid musical expression of insanity.

Musical nuance continues in Act 2 as Clorindo and Ermelinda, finally in each others’ arms, are discovered by Aristeo and Armidoro. This time, Clorindo attempts to feign madness by challenging the skies and stars to a duel, an obviously frivolous enterprise. The conventional – and correct – musical gesture he uses to express his intent may be part of what gives him away. Aristeo, recognizing Clorindo’s deception, exclaims that his “timing is off.” But Aristeo may actually recognize that the musical gesture here matches the verbal utterance too neatly. A madman would not likely be able to conjure such an accurate musical sign. Perhaps it is not only his flawed outward performance of madness that betrays him, but also his correct performance of musical gesture.

There is more to madness in Ermelinda than just Clorindo’s performance. In the seventeenth century, some writers thought that insanity was a sign of unbridled desire: Thomas Hobbes wrote in 1651 that “madnesse is nothing else but too much appearing passion.” In this respect, madness tinges Rosaura’s character as well. She echos Hobbes nearly word-for-word when she sings “Love is nothing but madness” (Altro non è l’Amor, che una pazzia) in Act 2. It could be said that Rosaura appears outwardly sane but inwardly mad while Clorindo appears outwardly mad but is in fact inwardly sane.

The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians pays an offhanded compliment to composer Domenico Freschi by stating that his operas contain “relatively well thought-out melodic writing”. In Ermelinda, one of the most outstanding passages is at the very end, as the title character laments her lover’s supposed death. Floating freely between recitative and aria, Freschi adds impressive depth and pathos to his character, just as she is about to take her own life. Many similar passages in the score could be cited here, but instead will be left to the listener to discover. Opera of the seventeenth century invites listeners today to delight as much in the musical experience, as in the play of emotion that still opens fresh windows into the human condition.