La Gazza Ladra (The Thieving Magpie) marked a culmination of the convergence of serious and comic elements in Rossini's work. The result is an ideal hybrid: a tragic opera with a happy ending that rises to the status of true opera series. It remains one of Rossini's greatest and most successful operas, a constant repertoire presence since it's triumphant 1817 Milan première. Alberto Zedda, who made his conducting début in 1956, produced the first critical edition of La Gazza Ladra, and is widely acknowledged as one of the world's foremost authorities on the operas of Rossini.