Gioachino Rossini Magpie" ("La gazza ladra") features one of his most celebrated overtures. Rossini moved to Paris in 1824 where he began to set French librettos to music. His last opera was the epic "William Tell" ("Guillaume Tell"), featuring its iconic overture which helped to usher in grand opera in France. A tendency for inspired, song-like melodies is evident throughout his scores, which earned him the nickname "the Italian Mozart." He was a rapid and prolific composer, quoted as joking, "Give me the laundress' bill and I will even set that to music." He also earned the nickname "Signor Crescendo" for his
La Scala into a costume. As with most of the theatres at that time, La Scala was also a casino, with gamblers sitting in the foyer. Conditions in the auditorium, too, could be frustrating for the opera lover, as Mary Shelley discovered in September 1840: At the Opera they were giving Otto Nicolai's "Templario". Unfortunately, as is well known, the theatre of La Scala serves, not only as the universal drawing-room for all the society of Milan, but every sort of trading transaction, from horse-dealing to stock-jobbing, is carried on in the pit; so that brief and far between are the snatches