At that time, the
Imperial Free City of Trieste was a possession of the
Habsburg monarchy. and was Austria’s main port and shipbuilding centre. It too had been occupied, briefly, and it was seeing tremendous political upheaval. But it was also a literary and artistic hub of central Europe, with a large merchant class and a booming economy. One particularly wealthy businessman was the Greek textile merchant Demetrio Carciotti. who wanted to build a home for himself, from which he could also run his business. He wanted what he described as "a grandiose, painstakingly constructed building on the seafront alongside the
Grand Canal, which will serve to embellish and adorn this city." Carciotti had already obtained the license to collect the stone for the project; to find the right architect, he sent a representative to Milan to find “a man of ability and taste”. Someone evidently pointed this person in the direction of Matteo Pertsch, whose Normalschule application was used as a source of information, and there were positive reports of his morality and professionalism. Meanwhile, another wealthy merchant, Giovanni Matteo Tommasini, wanted a new theatre for Trieste and awarded the commission to the architect
Gian Antonio Selva. Selva designed a horsehoe-shaped auditorium, following the style of Venice’s
La Fenice. When it was completed, Tommasini felt that the façade of the building was too plain. Likely upon the recommendation of, or connection to, Piermarini, and because he could see what Pertsch was doing for Carciotti, Tommasini hired Pertsch to change the building’s façade. Pertsch used elements of Piermarini’s La Scala design, creating a theatre that was Viennese on the inside and Milanese on the outside. The theatre opened in 1801 and remains one of the Europe’s most-visited opera houses. In 1804, due to his skill as a builder, the governor of Trieste gave Pertsch the title of City Building Appraiser, indicating that he was doing much more than erecting buildings. This likely led to his 1808 move to the garrison city of
Graz which, by this time, had been occupied by the French three times, in 1797, 1805 and in
1809. Its
fortress had been demolished, and it was in the midst of rebuilding and transformation. Under
Emperor Francis, Graz was established as the center of
Styria to serve as a crucial cultural, residential and industrial hub. Rather than being on record as the architect of any buildings in Graz, Pertsch is on record as being an "advisor", Pertsch mentored several students in his studio, notably Antonio Buttazzoni (1800-1848) who, upon Pertsch’s recommendation, attended the Brera Academy before making his mark on the development of the city of
Ljubljana. Another student was his
foreman, Giovanni Righetti, whose son, the architect Giuseppe Righetti, wrote of Pertsch: “He was an artist with a deep practice in construction that gave his works that convenient solidity, without exceeding unnecessary and great expense. As far as we know, he was one of the first to introduce the most remarkable improvements in the masonry construction, and in the systems and shapes of windows and doors, for which he went up in such a reputation, that he was overpowered by technical-artistic commissions.” As most of his clients were merchants and entrepreneurs, Pertsch was also skilled at not only using his designs in a cost-efficient manner, but also showing clients how methods and techniques could be profitable.* ==Personal life and death==