Widow's Night

In Milan last week a premiere for which Italy had waited almost a year came to pass. Nobles, diplomats, artists and high society packed into La Scala to hear singers retell the story of Lucretia's rape, the people's revolt and the eventual founding of the Roman Republic. Composer Ottorino Respighi had made his new opera dovetail scrupulously with Livy's 2,000-year-old account. As usual in his later work he had been sparing with orchestral effects, taken pains that voices should nearly everywhere prevail. Many pronounced Lucrezia the best opera Respighi ever wrote. The audience of 3,000 cheered and cheered. Conductor Marinuzzi took seven bows. But the composer did not take any, nor were there any calls for him, for Ottorino Respighi died last April.

In the box of Podesta Guido Pesenti sat Respighi's plump, 43-year-old widow. Donna Elsa could scarcely see the stage for tears. When the performance ended, the audience roared its thanks to her, knowing that she had finished her husband's last work when he had to lay it down.

Respighi needed a few more days to finish Lucrezia when he died of heart disease. Elsa Respighi promised to write the last 42 pages, and better than anyone alive was she qualified to do so. When she was a pretty, dark-eyed girl at the Santa Cecilia Academy in Rome, Elsa Olivieri Sangiacomo dreamed of being a composer and an opera star. She learned composition from Respighi, wrote songs, a symphonic poem, a dance suite, a fairy tale opera. In 1919 Respighi married her.

Donna Elsa stopped writing, content to help order Respighi's career. She stood proudly by when, in 1932, he put on his academic robe and became a member of Italy's Royal Academy (see cut). On their four U. S. tours she sang little beside his songs. In "The Pines," their villa high on the outskirts of Rome, she was first to sing his new compositions. Now she will write again to raise money for a music foundation in Respighi's memory.

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