Ottorino Respighi

Ottorino Respighi, born on July ninth, eighteen seventy-nine in Bologna, was a prominent Italian composer, conductor, and musicologist, recognized as one of the leading figures in early twentieth-century music. His diverse body of work includes operas, ballets, orchestral suites, choral pieces, chamber music, and transcriptions of Italian compositions from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. However, it is his three orchestral tone poems—Fountains of Rome, Pines of Rome, and Roman Festivals—that garnered him international acclaim.

Respighi hailed from a musical and artistic family, with his father encouraging him to pursue music from a young age. He began formal training in violin and piano, and in eighteen ninety-one, he enrolled at the Liceo Musicale di Bologna. There, he studied violin, viola, and composition, eventually becoming the principal violinist at the Russian Imperial Theatre. His studies included a brief period under the tutelage of the renowned composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.

In nineteen thirteen, Respighi moved to Rome to take on the role of professor of composition at the Liceo Musicale di Santa Cecilia. During this time, he married his student, the singer Elsa Olivieri-Sangiacomo. Although he resigned from his professorship in nineteen twenty-three to focus on touring and composing, he continued to teach until nineteen thirty-five, performing and conducting across the United States and South America until his passing.

Tragically, in late nineteen thirty-five, while working on his opera Lucrezia, Respighi fell ill and was diagnosed with bacterial endocarditis, leading to his death four months later at the age of fifty-six. His wife, Elsa, lived for nearly sixty more years, dedicating herself to preserving and promoting her late husband's legacy. Notably, conductor Salvatore Di Vittorio later completed several of Respighi's unfinished works, including the Violin Concerto in A major, which premiered in twenty ten.