According to historian Ellen Rosand the academy, in keeping with its name, usually operated behind the scenes. Members often wrote in a secret language, and frequently published their works anonymously. The academy was particularly active in the promotion of musical theatre in Venice from the 1630s onward, founding its own theatre, the Novissimo, which flourished briefly between 1614 and 1645. In their librettos for musical dramas the iconoclastic intellectuals of the academy set a tone which was "[often] shockingly frank and frequently amoral". Among these librettists were Giacomo Badoaro, who wrote Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria for Claudio Monteverdi, and Giovanni Francesco Busenello, who provided Monteverdi with the libretto for the composer's final and arguably greatest operatic work,