Ottorino Respighi ( , ; ; 9 July 187918 April 1936) was an Italian composer, violinist, teacher, and musicologist and one of the leading Italian composers of the early 20th century. His compositions range over operas, ballets, orchestral suites, choral songs, chamber music, and transcriptions of Italian compositions of the 16th–18th centuries, but his best known and most performed works are his three orchestral tone poems which brought him international fame: Fountains of Rome (1916), Pines of Rome (1924), and Roman Festivals (1928).

Respighi was born in Bologna to a musical and artistic family. He was encouraged by his father to pursue music at a young age, and took formal tuition in the violin and piano. In 1891, he enrolled at the Liceo Musicale di Bologna, where he studied the violin, viola, and composition, was principal violinist at the Russian Imperial Theatre, and studied briefly with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. He relocated to Rome in 1913 to become professor of composition at the Liceo Musicale di Santa Cecilia. During this period he married his pupil, singer Elsa Olivieri-Sangiacomo. In 1923, Respighi quit his professorship to dedicate time to tour and compose, but continued to teach until 1935. He performed and conducted in various capacities across the United States and South America from 1925 until his death.

In late 1935, while composing his opera Lucrezia, Respighi became ill and was diagnosed with bacterial endocarditis. He died four months later, aged 56. His wife Elsa outlived him for almost 60 years, championing her late husband's works and legacy until her death in 1996. Conductor and composer Salvatore Di Vittorio completed several of Respighi's incomplete and previously unpublished works, including the finished Violin Concerto in A major (1903) which premiered in 2010.

Biography

Early years

Respighi was born on 9 July 1879 at 8 Via Guido Reni, an apartment building to the side of Palazzo Fantuzzi in Bologna. The third and youngest child of Giuseppe and Ersilia (née Putti) Respighi, he had a middle class upbringing with his sister Amelia; his brother Alberto died at age nine. Giuseppe, a postal worker, was an accomplished pianist who studied the instrument with Stefano Golinelli and taught music at the Accademia Filarmonica di Bologna. Amelia described Respighi as closed in nature but sincere, sensitive, and generous.

In 1902, Respighi travelled to Berlin where he received brief tuition from composer Max Bruch. Despite sources incorrectly stating that he studied with Bruch in 1908, Respighi's wife stated that Respighi in fact did not study with Bruch at all. In 1905, Respighi completed his first opera, the comedy Re Enzo. Between 1903 and 1910, as his local reputation was on the rise, Respighi's principal activities were performing at the Teatro Comunale and as first violinist in composer Bruno Mugellini's touring chamber quintet. He collaborated with various singers, in particular Chiarina Fino-Savio, who performed several of Respighi's songs written for solo voice and piano and set to words by poets Ada Negri and Carlo Zangarini. This included perhaps his most well known, "Nebbie".

thumb|upright|left|Respighi in 1912

In 1906, Respighi completed his first of many transcriptions of pieces by 17th and 18th century composers. His version of "Lamento d'Arianna" by Claudio Monteverdi for voice and orchestra became his first international success when it was performed during his visit to Berlin in 1908. This second stay in Germany lasted for almost a year, after Hungarian soprano Etelka Gerster hired Respighi as an accompanist at her singing school which greatly influenced his subsequent vocal compositions. Respighi met Arthur Nikisch, then conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, who arranged to conduct his Monteverdi transcription in concert with famed singer Julia Culp as soloist. Biographer Michael Webb considered this a milestone in the rediscovery of Monteverdi's output, and the critical success of the performance encouraged Respighi to produce further transcriptions of older works. This included two sonatas for viola d'amore and harpsichord from original music by fellow Bolognese composer Attilio Ariosti. In the next, Respighi replaced Torchi as the teacher of composition at the Liceo Musicale, which lasted until his move to Rome. From 1921 they lived in a flat in Palazzo Borghese which they named . Elsa recalled composer Giacomo Puccini saying their marriage was "the most beautiful and perfect thing I know." In 1923, Respighi became the first director of the now state-funded in Rome. He disliked the time-consuming administrative duties the position required and resigned in 1926, but continued to teach an advanced course in composition at the conservatory until 1935.

Six years after Fountains of Rome, Respighi completed the follow-up orchestral tone poem Pines of Rome which premiered at the Augusteo in December 1924. It became one of his most well known and widely performed works. In 1925, Respighi and Sebastiano Luciani published an elementary textbook on the history of music and theory entitled Orpheus.

International recognition, 1925–1936

By the mid-1920s, Respighi's growing worldwide fame encouraged the composer to travel extensively, conducting his own pieces, or performing as soloist for his piano compositions. He made his first visit to America in December 1925 to perform and conduct a series of concerts; his first took place at Carnegie Hall on 31 December as soloist for the premiere of his piano and orchestral work, Concerto in modo misolidio. In March 1926, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam dedicated a series of concerts to Respighi and in 1931, a Respighi festival was held in Belgium. In September 1927, Respighi conducted the premiere of his , a three-movement orchestral piece inspired by three paintings by Sandro Botticelli in Vienna. He dedicated it to American pianist Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, the patron of the work. By the year's end Respighi completed his third Roman tone poem, Roman Festivals, composed in just nine days. It premiered on 21 February 1929 at Carnegie Hall in New York City with Arturo Toscanini conducting the New York Philharmonic. The Italian premiere followed on 17 March. Having completed the work, Respighi felt that he had incorporated the "maximum of orchestral sonority and colour" from the orchestra and could no longer write such large scale pieces. It was at this time he started to favour compositions for smaller ensembles.

At the end of 1929, Respighi had conductor Serge Koussevitzky forward a proposal to Sergei Rachmaninoff which involved permission to orchestrate a selection of piano pieces from his two Études-Tableaux, Op. 33 and Op. 39. An enthusiastic Rachmaninoff accepted the offer and supplied Respighi with the program descriptions behind five pieces which were previously kept secret. Koussevitzky conducted the premiere of Respighi's with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in November 1931, and noted that Respighi's arrangements were "very good" and demanding of the orchestra which required eight rehearsals. Rachmaninoff thanked Respighi for his work and being faithful to the original scores. Later in 1930, Respighi wrote a commission piece to honour the fiftieth anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The result was Metamorphoseon, Modi XII, an orchestral work containing a theme and twelve variations.

In 1932, the Fascist government honoured Respighi with membership of the Reale Accademia d'Italia, one of the highest honours awarded to the most eminent people in Italian science and culture. In the same year Respighi was a signatory in an anti-modernist group that involved several composers, including Pizzetti, Alceo Toni, and Giuseppe Mulè. Also in 1932, Respighi completed his second concert tour of the US.

Respighi's opera La fiamma premiered at the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma in January 1934, with the composer as conductor. In June 1934, Respighi and Elsa made the month-long voyage to Argentina where Respighi conducted the same opera. This was followed by a visit to Uruguay, where several orchestral concerts were arranged for radio broadcast. Respighi's final completed work was a transcription of , a cantata by Benedetto Marcello.

Illness and death

By May 1935, Respighi had cancelled several engagements due to ill health, including a scheduled trip to conduct a series of concerts at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. By November, he had completed a piano draft and the majority of the orchestral arrangements of his next opera, Lucrezia. He had planned to work on a transcription of an opera by Francesco Cavalli that was to be staged alongside Lucrezia during the 1936–37 season at the La Scala in Milan, but declining health caused him to stop work. Neither work was completed in Respighi's lifetime; Elsa finished Lucrezia after Respighi's death with Respighi's former pupil Ennio Porrino, in 1937.

thumb|Respighi's tomb

While working on his opera Lucrezia at the end of 1935, Respighi became ill with a fever and fatigue. Subsequent medical checks in January 1936 revealed samples of S. viridans bacteria in his blood, leading to the diagnosis of subacute bacterial endocarditis, a heart infection still untreatable at the time and probably brought on by his recent throat infection and oral surgery. Respighi's health deteriorated over the next four months, during which he received three blood transfusions and experimental treatment with sulphonamides imported from Germany. Elsa made a conscious effort to hide the severity of the illness from others, except for a select few. Respighi died on 18 April in Rome, aged 56, from complications of blood poisoning. Elsa and several friends were by his side. A funeral was held two days later. His body lay in state at Santa Maria del Popolo until the spring of 1937, when the remains were re-interred at the Certosa di Bologna, next to poet Giosuè Carducci and painter Giorgio Morandi. Nevertheless, in 1961 she donated a collection of unpublished and incomplete manuscripts to the Liceo Musicale and in 1969, helped establish the Fondo Ottorino Respighi foundation at the Fondazione Cini in Venice which included the donation of a large number of letters and photographs. A collection of manuscripts of early works, personal items, and the composer's death mask were also donated to the International Museum and Library of Bologna. The orchestra continues to premiere ongoing new editions by Di Vittorio of Respighi's music in premieres as well as recordings on Naxos Records. In 2008, Di Vittorio premiered his Overture Respighiana, an orchestral work written as a homage to Respighi.

Works

Opera

  • Re Enzo (1905)
  • Semirâma (1909)
  • Marie Victoire (completed in 1913, but not produced until 2004)
  • La bella dormente nel bosco (1922)
  • Belfagor (1923)
  • La campana sommersa (1927)
  • Maria egiziaca (1932)
  • La fiamma (1934)
  • Lucrezia (1937) opera in 1 act (completed posthumously by his wife, Elsa, and his pupil Ennio Porrino)

Ballet

  • La Boutique fantasque (1918), borrows tunes from the 19th-century Italian composer Rossini. Premiered in London on 5 June 1919.
  • Sèvres de la vieille France (1920), transcription of 17th- and 18th-century French music
  • La Pentola magica (1920), based on popular Russian themes
  • Scherzo Veneziano (Le astuzie di Columbina) (1920)
  • Belkis, Regina di Saba (1932)

Orchestral

thumb|400px|Use of the [[Phrygian mode on A in Respighi's Trittico Botticelliano (Botticelli Triptych, 1927). ]]

  • thumb|Fountains of Rome by the New York PhilharmonicPreludio, corale e fuga (1901)
  • Aria per archi (1901)
  • Leggenda for Violin and Orchestra P 36 (1902)
  • Piano Concerto in A minor (1902)
  • Suite per archi (1902)
  • Humoreske for Violin and Orchestra P 45 (1903)
  • Violin Concerto in A major (1903), completed by Salvatore Di Vittorio (2009)
  • Fantasia Slava (1903)
  • Suite in E major (Sinfonia) (1903)
  • Serenata per piccola orchestra (1904)
  • Suite in Sol Maggiore (1905), for organ and strings
  • Ouverture Burlesca (1906)
  • Concerto all'antica for Violin and Orchestra (1908)
  • Ouverture Carnevalesca (1913)
  • Tre Liriche (1913), for mezzo-soprano and orchestra (Notte, Nebbie, Pioggia)
  • Sinfonia Drammatica (1914)
  • Fountains of Rome (1916)
  • thumb|Part 1 of Suite No. 1 of Ancient Airs and DancesAncient Airs and Dances Suite No. 1 (1917), based on Renaissance lute pieces by Simone Molinaro, Vincenzo Galilei (father of Galileo Galilei), and additional anonymous composers.
  • Ballata delle Gnomidi (1919), based on a poem by Claudio Clausetti
  • Adagio con variazioni (1921), for Cello and Orchestra
  • Concerto gregoriano for Violin and Orchestra (1921)
  • Ancient Airs and Dances Suite No. 2 (1923), based on pieces for lute, archlute, and viol by Fabritio Caroso, Jean-Baptiste Besard, Bernardo Gianoncelli, and an anonymous composer. It also interpolates an aria attributed to Marin Mersenne.
  • Pines of Rome (1924)
  • Concerto in modo misolidio (Concerto in the Mixolydian mode) (1925)
  • Poema autunnale (Autumn Poem), for Violin and Orchestra (1925)
  • Rossiniana (1925), free transcriptions from Rossini's Quelques riens (from Péchés de vieillesse)
  • Vetrate di chiesa (Church Windows) (1926), four movements of which three are based on Tre Preludi sopra melodie gregoriane for piano (1919)
  • Trittico Botticelliano (Three Botticelli Pictures) (1927), three movements inspired by Botticelli paintings in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence: Primavera, Adoration of the Magi, and The Birth of Venus. The middle movement uses the well-known tune "Veni, veni, Emmanuel".
  • Impressioni brasiliane (Brazilian Impressions) (1928)
  • The Birds (1928), based on Baroque pieces imitating birds. It comprises Introduzione (Bernardo Pasquini), La Colomba (Jacques de Callot), La Gallina (Jean-Philippe Rameau), L'Usignolo (anonymous English composer of the seventeenth century) and Il Cucu (Pasquini)
  • Toccata for Piano and Orchestra (1928)
  • Roman Festivals (1928)
  • Metamorphoseon (1930)
  • Ancient Airs and Dances Suite No. 3 (1932), arranged for strings only and somewhat melancholy in overall mood. It is based on lute songs by Besard, a piece for baroque guitar by Ludovico Roncalli, lute pieces by Santino Garsi da Parma and additional anonymous composers.
  • Concerto a cinque (Concerto for Five) (1933), for oboe, trumpet, violin, double bass, piano and strings

Vocal/choral

  • Nebbie (1906), voice and piano
  • Stornellatrice (1906), voice and piano
  • Cinque canti all'antica (1906), voice and piano
  • Il Lamento di Arianna (1908), for mezzo-soprano and orchestra
  • Aretusa (text by Shelley) (1911), cantata for mezzo-soprano and orchestra
  • Tre Liriche (1913), for mezzo-soprano and orchestra (Notte, Nebbie, Pioggia)