Ottorino Respighi was born in Bologna, where his father taught him piano and violin. He studied violin with Federico Sarti at the Liceo Musicale in Bologna and took composition lessons from Giuseppe Martucci and Luigi Torchi, who studied early music. In 1900, he spent five months in Russia studying composition with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov while working as first violinist in the Russian Imperial Theatre orchestra in St Petersburg. Respighi also studied composition with Max Bruch in Berlin in 1902. Until 1908, he mainly played violin with the Mugellini Quintet before focusing on composition. Respighi was also a music scholar dedicated to Italian music from the 16th to 18th centuries. He published editions of works by Claudio Monteverdi, Antonio Vivaldi, and Benedetto Marcello. His interest in this older music influenced his compositions, leading some to label him as a Neo-classicist. However, his style is closer to Neo-Renaissance or Neo-Baroque because he mixed pre-classical forms like dance suites with a 19th-century romantic style, avoiding the classical period's musical language. Respighi died in his villa "I Pini" near Rome. After his burial, his remains were moved a year later to his hometown of Bologna, where they were reburied at the city's expense. His life ended in Rome, but his connection to his birthplace remained strong through this reinterment. His wife, Elsa Respighi, was his former student and a mezzo-soprano singer and composer. She created ballets based on his Ancient Airs and Dances Suites and completed his last opera, Lucrezia, in 1937. Elsa supported her husband's work throughout her long life, publishing a biography of him in 1962. She founded Fondo Respighi in 1969 to promote music education in Italy and led the 1979 Respighi Centenary celebrations, which revived many of his lesser-known works. Elsa also wrote a memoir about meeting important cultural figures in the early 20th century and had some of her own music premiered after Respighi's.