La gazza ladra

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La gazza ladra
Opera semiseria by Gioachino Rossini
Portrait of the composer
Translation	The Thieving Magpie
Librettist	Giovanni Gherardini
Language	Italian
Based on	La pie voleuse by Théodore Baudouin d'Aubigny and Louis-Charles Caigniez
Premiere	31 May 1817 (1817-05-31) La Scala, Milan

La gazza ladra (Italian pronunciation: [la ˈɡaddza ˈlaːdra], The Thieving Magpie) is a melodramma or opera semiseria in two acts by Gioachino Rossini, with a libretto by Giovanni Gherardini based on La pie voleuse by Théodore Baudouin d'Aubigny and Louis-Charles Caigniez. The Thieving Magpie is best known for the overture, which is musically notable for its use of snare drums. This memorable section in Rossini's overture evokes the image of the opera's main subject: a devilishly clever, thieving magpie.

Rossini wrote quickly, and La gazza ladra was no exception. A 19th-century biography quotes him as saying that the conductor of the premiere performance locked him in a room at the top of La Scala the day before the premiere with orders to complete the opera's still unfinished overture. He was under the guard of four stagehands whose job it was to toss each completed page out the window to the copyist below.^[1]