This memorable section in Rossini's overture evokes the image of the opera's main subject: a devilishly clever, thieving magpie.

The 1866 revision included embellishments and variations written specifically for Giuseppina Vitali, who was singing the role of Ninetta.

A French-language opera-comique using the original title of the French source material (La pie voleuse) in a version translated by Castil-Blaze was premiered in Lille, France, on 15 October 1822.

At the house of Fabrizio Vingradito and his wife Lucia there is joy for the imminent return of their son Giannetto from the war.

The stunned Ninetta, desperate to protect her father, is unable to refute the accusations, and the Mayor orders her arrest.

Ninetta asks Pippo to sell a gold cross and put some money for her father in an agreed hiding place – a chestnut tree.

Ernesto, a military friend of Fernando, bursts in looking for the Mayor and holding a royal pardon for Ninetta's father.

From the tower, Pippo and Antonio cry out that they have found Lucia's silver in the magpie's nest and they ring the bells.

An animated short film called La gazza ladra was made in 1964 by Giulio Gianini and Emanuele Luzzati using the overture as the soundtrack, with motion synchronized to the music.

The music gives the viewer a voyeuristic insight into the exhilaration that the sociopathic narrator Alex obtains from a typical night out with his friends performing acts of violence and mayhem while mindless of the horrific consequences for his victims.

The overture served as influence in John Williams’s Aunt Marge’s Waltz from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.