Biography
Girolamo Pera was a Venetian priest, organist and composer, baptised in Venice on 24 January 1694 according to newly recovered archival evidence, though some modern scholarship still gives *c.*1691. Documented as organist of San Giacomo dell'Orio by 1730, he briefly served as maestro di cappella at Udine Cathedral in 1734 and in 1737–38 became chapel master to the Olomouc prince-bishop Wolfgang Hannibal von Schrattenbach. For Schrattenbach he wrote the expansive 1737 Stabat mater, whose autograph survives in Venice, and the 1738 Brno oratorio Il giusto afflitto nella persona di Giobbe, presently known from its libretto. He later taught Joseph Schuster in Venice and from 1768 served as organist and chapel master at Concordia Cathedral in Portogruaro, where he died on 2 May 1771.
The Fondo Giustinian preserves an unexpectedly large body of his sacred music, including more than seventy autographs, making Pera a striking case of a substantial eighteenth-century composer whose surviving œuvre has only recently been recovered by scholarship. Modern discography remains very small and is dominated by organ Versetti and sonatas; no commercial recording of the 1737 Stabat has been made as of 2026, although its modern première was given by Ensemble Damian in 2021.
Biography text from Last.fm, available under CC BY-SA.