The co-founder and past president of the Opera Club of The Villages has died of COVID-19.
Current president Geraldine Piscitelli sent out an email Friday announcing with a “heavy heart” that Angelo Pierro had succumbed to the deadly virus. Pierro and the late Oscar Feliu founded the opera club in 1997 and established the Harold S. Schwartz Music Scholarship program, which has gifted more than $560,000 in scholarships to music students in Sumter, Lake and Marion counties.
Pierro, who had been battling the Coronavirus for a few weeks, was receiving hospice care at the time of his death. He had moved from The Villages a few years ago to become a deacon in the St. Paul National Catholic Church in Belleview with the help of his stepson, Friar Mark Niznik, Piscitelli said in her email.
“Many members worked with Angelo to establish the Harold S. Schwartz Music Scholarship,” Piscitelli said. “May he rest in peace.”
Maestro Bill Doherty was close friends with Pierro. He posted a photo of him on Facebook and like many in The Villages, said he was sad to hear of Pierro’s death.
“He was such a loving and hard-working man,” Doherty said in an email. “My soul is so heavy today.”
Several area residents offered their thoughts on Facebook in response to Doherty’s post.
“Amazing man, amazing legacy,” Susan Williams wrote. “May we all show love as Deacon Angelo did.”
Jane Sutherland Denton wrote that longtime friends Pierro and Feliu, who died of a massive heart attack in November 2015 while on a hunting and fishing trip in New York, are together again.
Villages entertainer Kathleen Kane said she was heartbroken.
“He was amazing and so full of goodness and God’s love,” she wrote of Pierro. “We have truly lost someone so very special. He is certainly in heaven now.”