Louis-Charles Caigniez author in the melodrama genre are: "le Jugement de Salomon" (1802) and "la Pie voleuse, ou la Servante de Palaiseau" (1815). These two plays were presented with the same long success, both in Paris and in the cities of the province and abroad ; Rossini composed his opera "La gazza ladra" after the second. Louis-Charles Caigniez Louis-Charles Caigniez (13 April 1762 – 19 February 1842) was a 19th-century French playwright. Endowed with a real talent for the stage, Caigniez competed on the boulevard theaters with René Charles Guilbert de Pixérécourt and was nicknamed "the Racine of melodrama", of which Pixérécourt
La fille du régiment beautiful and worthy for the cordial hospitality which France offers him in all her theatres, subsidized or not." Despite its bumpy start, the opera soon became hugely popular at the Opéra-Comique. During its first 80 years, it reached its 500th performance at the theatre in 1871 and its 1,000th in 1908. The opera was first performed in Italy at La Scala, Milan, on 3 October 1840, in Italian with recitatives by Donizetti replacing the spoken dialogue. It was thought "worthless" and received only six performances. It was not until 1928 when Toti Dal Monte sang Marie that the opera began