The overture to this opera has long been a concert favorite. It begins with the arresting sound of two snare drums, snapping to attention, as it were, for a military march, which leads into a quotation of a love duet. Rossini uses one of his trademark crescendos to lead into a passage of remarkable turmoil before the two main themes are recapitulated.

The 1817 opera is often described in comic terms: A servant girl, Ninetta (who is in love with one Fernando) is accused of stealing a silver spoon. She refuses to assert her innocence because complications of the situation would lead, if she did so, to exposure of her father, an army deserter. Finally (and just in time), it is learned that the real thief is a pet magpie, who made off with the glittering utensil and put it in his nest.

This may all sound comic, but behind the crimes of both theft and desertion lay the grim threat of the death penalty. In historical fact, there was a young servant girl who had actually been executed for theft, too late to benefit from the subsequent discovery of the pilfered item in a magpie's nest. This incident was infamous at the time and led to a general European revulsion of the death penalty for theft crimes, and would certainly have been known to Rossini's audience.

Thus, Rossini here had a remarkable opportunity to blend the comic elements of misunderstanding, concealment, and pursuit of the heroine by a farcical suitor with strong drama and potential tragedy. The scene of Ninetta's trial is grippingly dramatic as she is trapped by the situation of having to chose whether to sacrifice herself or her father. And the dramatic situation only heightens the romanticism of the opera's love music. Ninetta's arias "Di piacer mi balza il cor" and "Deh, tu reggi in tal momento" are well-known, as is her lover's "Accusata di furto."

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Overture to La gazza ladra (The Thieving Magpie)

The overture to La gazza ladra (The Magpie Thief, 1817) is a staple of the curtain-raiser slot in symphonic concerts. It is chock-full of the colorful orchestral strokes that populate the whole group of Rossini overtures, beginning a pair of side drum rolls at the very start that add military color and are just long enough to seem a bit ominous. They introduce an opera, designated a melodramma, that shades comic elements with darker overtones; the plot deals with a servant girl accused of stealing some silverware with which the magpie of the title has actually absconded for its nest. Seemingly lightweight, the opera was rooted in a true story in which a young woman was actually put to death for the bird's "crime," a story that Rossini's audience would have known well.

Indeed the overture itself neatly melds episodic color with the weightier drama of symphonic sonata form. It features a parade of effects and lovely themes, including an especially famous one introduced by an oboe, that anticipate the characters and action to come, and then, following a spectacular crescendo, reworks several of these themes in a mini-development section. The La gazza ladra overture is atypical in its thematic links to the opera to follow; Rossini, one of music's great adherents of the reuse-and-recycle school, often made the same overture do service for two (or even more) operas at this early stage in his career. The special care he took with this one shows not just in the links between overture and staged scenes, but in the vividness and excitement of the whole.

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