The history of Venice unfolded in continuous economic, political and artistic contact with different cultures. Its geographic position and its natural opening to the sea placed the city on the border between East and West, allowing the Serenissima to develop commercial and political relationships with the Near and Far East, and to establish itself as a centre of diplomacy. The cosmopolitan character of the Serenissima was known throughout Europe and travel reports comment on Venice’s unusual ethnic variety: ‘Greeks, Levantines, Turks, Arabs, Persians, Ethiopians, Slavs, Indians, Syrians, Egyptians and others’ cohabited with Venetians and citizens from the Italian peninsula and other European countries. The influence of Islamic art on Venice is still visible today in the architecture of the city, and its centuries-old fascination with the East, especially the Ottoman Empire, emerges through a variety of writings on Turkish history, language and culture published throughout the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Legislation tended to protect Venice’s economic interests and granted Turkish merchants protection and freedom of faith. The relatively liberal attitude that characterised Venice’s domestic and foreign policies, however, coexisted with general feelings of suspicion, fear and hatred towards the Turks. Trade with the East brought wealth and power, but wars with the Ottoman Empire eventually led to the economic decline of the Serenissima during the second half of the seventeenth century and the loss of its central role in European politics.

These contrasting attitudes of the Venetian republic towards the East, and more specifically towards the Turks, filter through contemporary legal, diplomatic and historical writings, poetry, novels and operatic representations. This web of texts can provide insights into how the historical and cultural context of the Republic (of which opera is a part) shapes and is in turn shaped by these writings, exposing more general processes and structures by which a particular culture makes sense of the world.