18th century musicologist Charles Burney noted that "the number of songs in this opera that became national favourites was perhaps greater than in any other that was ever performed in England" and "the slow air "Falsa imagine", (which Cuzzoni had at first not wished to perform), "the first which Cuzzoni sung in this country, fixed her reputation as an expressive and pathetic singer." John Gay complained in a letter to his friend Jonathan Swift that such was the craze for Italian opera created by "Ottone" that no one in London was interested in any other form of art or literature: