[1] Francesco Sacrati not only wrote the music but also arranged for the singers, with the role of Deidamia, the "madwoman" from the title, given to the young soprano Anna Renzi, who had only made her debut in Rome the previous year and would now perform in Venice for the first time.

[1] The stage designs and visual effects were made by Giacomo Torelli and described in a 55-page booklet, the Cannocchiale per la finta pazza ("Telescope on the feigned madwoman") that appeared after the opera season.

[1] The opera was produced in Piacenza in 1644, by the Accademici Febiarmonici; the libretto was printed (with some modifications, omitting the name of Strozzi and references to Venice) in Codogno.

1647 saw productions in Bologna, by the Accademici Discordati with the probable participation of Francesco Sacrati, and in Genoa; the next year it could be seen in Turin and Reggio Emilia, and in 1652 it appeared in Naples and Milan.

Hoping to flatter his French patrons, Torelli included in the background for Act I, scenes 1–2 (The port of Skyros), a view of the Place Dauphine and the relatively new equestrian statue of Henri IV on the Pont Neuf.

[1] La finta pazza is said to have been responsible for the use of disguise as a central plot element in many later operas, even though its "men-disguised-as-woman" theme was usually reversed in later works.

Real or feigned madness was used in many operas in the next fifteen years, starting already in 1641 with Didone by Francesco Cavalli, and with the end of the craze in 1657 with Le fortune di Rodope e Damira by Aurelio Aureli and Pietro Andrea Ziani, which was also the final role of Anna Renzi in Venice.

The opera remained influential in the next century as well, when Pietro Metastasio created in 1736 his hugely popular libretto Achille in Sciro, which was set to music more than sixty times in the next hundred years.