My letters to Ottorino and hers to me trace the first period of our life together. After the wedding, the correspondence between us is very little, because in the eighteen years of life together we were only separated for a few days.

(Elsa Olivieri Sangiacomo)

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A theatrical adaptation of the letters that Respighi exchanged with his wife Elsa Olivieri before their marriage was woven on the music of Ottorino Respighi's "Doppio Quartetto". These are letters that Elsa herself has collected in a volume, which she simply titled "Ottorino Respighi".

A very precious instrument will enrich the musical performance: the violinist  Roberto Noferini will play the violin that belonged to Respighi , a violin of prestigious and ancient Bolognese lutherie, built around 1730. by the luthier Florenus Guidantus (1687-1760).

The scenographic images will help to discover a fragment of the life of this great Bolognese musician and composer, who, for his genius, deserves to be rediscovered by his city to which he was very attached.

Respighi is deeply and intimately linked to the city of Bologna and lives it with very strong nostalgia every time he moves away from it. In fact, he settled in Rome in 1913, winning the competition for the Chair of Composition and Fugue at the Conservatory of Santa Cecilia, but his countless journeys can already be counted from his youth in via Castagnoli 2 (now Largo Respighi - BO), starting from the small room used as a study, from the fir bookcase built with his own hands, from the collection of vocabularies in different languages, with a particular curiosity for the less known ones.

The vocabularies are followed by atlases and hours spent studying a geographical map.

“ Those were, those were the first trips, the most beautiful I've ever done around the world ”. 
It is not always easy to play a dreamer.

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The event is part of the RESPIGHI project .