Stendhal wrote appreciatively of the ballet at La Scala but wrote of Vignanò, who wrote the ballet for which Sanquirico designed the scenery: 'his imagination has about it a certain Shakespearian quality - yet the very name of Shakespeare, I suspect would mean nothing to him', H. Stendhal Rome, Naples and Florence, London, 1959 ed., p. 369. Despite the enormous success of Otello, Stendhal wrote to Vignanò in February 1818, suggesting suitable choreographic themes in Shakespeare