Read all about it! Magpies not guilty!

Rossini’s opera La gazza ladra was composed to a libretto based on a highly successful French melodrama called La Pie voleuse ou la Servante du Palaiseau. It dramatised a true incident in which a French peasant girl was wrongly hanged for a theft that turned out to be the work of a thieving magpie.

Like bubbles in a bottle of champagne

The composer Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868) was born into a family of musicians in Pesaro, a town on the Adriatic coast of Italy. His father was a horn player and his mother a singer. Rossini’s parents began his musical training early and by the age of six he was playing the triangle in his father’s musical ensemble.

Desert Island Discs (3) – Rossini and Wagner

Gioachino Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle (Little Solemn Mass) was written in 1863. The composer prefaced the work with the following words – somewhat tongue-in-cheek.