The Ottorino Respighi Bequest in the Giorgio Cini Foundation was re-organised and digitised in 2008 with the contribution of the Veneto Archives Superintendency.
Directed by Giovanni Morelli, the project was carried out by Martina Buran (documentary archive) and Vitale Fano (music manuscripts).
The resulting DVD entitled “Ottorino Respighi. Music manuscripts and documentary archive at the Giorgio Cini Foundation, Venice” is a very useful instrument for all Respighi scholars. As well as making available the results of the work by reproducing the inventories on digital support (they can thus be consulted and searched using search tools), all the manuscript music can also be viewed.
The manuscript music includes the inventory of 140 manuscript sources consisting of complete, incomplete and unfinished autograph Respighi compositions; drafts, fragments and notes; transcriptions or copies made personally or by others; and other musicians’ transcriptions or copies of Respighi’s music. The Bequest also contains fascinating autograph works, including La campana sommersa and La bella dormente nel bosco and symphonic compositions like Le astuzie di Colombina, the Violin Concerto in A Minor and the music for the lyrical poem Aretusa. The pieces of chamber music include the Wind Quintet, Elsa Respighi’s hand-written copy of the Piano Quintet, and a large
number of chamber songs.
The whole collection of manuscripts in the Respighi Bequest in the Giorgio Cini Foundation has been digitised and recorded on the DVD, thus offering the chance to view over 6,300 images of Respighi’s manuscript music.
The documentary heritage, on the other hand, consists of Respighi’s papers and large correspondence with musicians, writers, editors and figures from the political, official and artistic world of the early decades of the 20th century, as well as many documents attesting to Elsa Respighi’s tireless enthusiastic work of making her husband’s music known. The archive includes notes, autograph drafts, accounts, official letters, contracts, in addition to photographs of sets, stage designs and sketches, all appropriately listed in the inventory.