The overture to Rossini’s opera, The Thieving Magpie, was written at the eleventh hour on the day of the first performance. The composer locked himself in a room at La Scala while he wrote and stationed four stagehands outside to stop anyone who tried to interrupt him. Rossini would throw pages of the overture out of a window as he completed them, down to a team of copyists below who would create parts for the orchestra to play from. 

Despite its rushed creation, the overture to The Thieving Magpie is the most recognisable part of the opera, and one of Rossini’s most loved works.