Lily Pons

c. 1937

Lily Pons (April 12, 1898 – February 13, 1976) was a French-American coloratura soprano.

Biography

Born as Alice "Lili" Joséphine Pons in Draguignan near Cannes, Pons first studied piano at the Paris Conservatory, winning the First Prize at the age of 15. At the onset of World War I, in 1914, Lili moved to Cannes with her mother and younger sister Juliette (born 22 December 1902) where she played piano and sang for soldiers at receptions given in support of the French troops and at the famous Hotel Carlton that had been transformed into a hospital, and where her mother, Marie Pons, worked as a volunteer nurse orderly. In February 1915, Marie Pons gave birth to an illegitimate daughter, Christiane, issued from an affair with a wounded soldier treated at the Hotel Carlton. In 1925, encouraged by soprano Dyna Beumer, she started taking singing lessons from Alberti de Gorostiaga in Paris.

She successfully made her operatic debut in the title role of Léo Delibes' Lakmé at Mulhouse in 1928 and went on to sing several coloratura roles in French provincial opera houses.

Career

She was discovered by the impresario Giovanni Zenatello, who took her to New York where she auditioned for Giulio Gatti-Casazza, the general manager of the Metropolitan Opera.The Met desperately needed a star coloratura after the retirement of Amelita Galli-Curci in January 1930. On January 3, 1931, Pons, unknown in the U.S., made an unheralded Met debut as Lucia in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor and on that occasion the spelling of her first name was changed to "Lily". Against all odds, her performance received tremendous acclaim. She became a star overnight and inherited most of Galli-Curci's important coloratura roles. She also signed a recording contract with RCA Victor Records.

Pons was a principal soprano at the Met for thirty years, appearing 300 times in ten roles from 1931 until 1960. Her most frequent performances were as Lucia (93 performances), Lakmé (50 performances), Gilda in Verdi's Rigoletto (49 performances), and Rosina in Rossini's The Barber of Seville (33 performances).

Other roles in her repertoire included Olympia in Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffman, Philine in Ambroise Thomas's Mignon, Amina in Bellini's La Sonnambula, Marie in Donizetti's The Daughter of the Regiment, the Queen in Rimsky-Korsakov's The Golden Cockerel, and the title role in Donizetti's Linda di Chamounix, (a role she sang in the opera's Met premiere on March 1, 1934). The last major role Lily Pons learned was Violetta in Traviata, which she performed at the San Francisco Opera. In her last performance at the Met, on December 14, 1960, she sang "Caro nome" from Rigoletto as part of a gala performance.

She also made guest appearances at the Opéra Garnier in Paris, Covent Garden in London, La Monnaie in Brussels, Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, the Chicago Opera and the San Francisco Opera. After her Met farewell, she continued to sing concerts until 1973.

Films

She starred in three RKO films: I Dream Too Much (1935) with Henry Fonda, That Girl From Paris (1936) and Hitting a New High (1937).

Personal life

In 1940, she became a naturalized citizen of the United States. From 1938 to 1958, she was married to the conductor André Kostelanetz. During World War II, she toured the battlefields of North Africa and East Asia. Her country of birth awarded her the Croix de Lorraine and the Légion d'Honneur.

Death

She died of pancreatic cancer in Dallas, Texas at the age of 77, and her remains were brought back to her birthplace to be interred in the Cimetière du Grand Jas in Cannes on the French Riviera. Her nephew, John de Bry (son of her sister Juliette), an archaeologist living in Florida, is her only surviving relative in the United States.

Legacies

A village in Frederick County, Maryland, 10 miles south of Frederick, Maryland is called "Lilypons" in her honor. The town is known for its commercial tropical fish ponds.^[1]

George Gershwin was in the process of writing a piece of music dedicated to her when he died in 1937. The incomplete sketch was found among Gershwin's papers after his death and was eventually revived and completed by Michael Tilson Thomas and given the simple title 'For Lily Pons'.

Recordings

In the late 1930s she made three movies for RKO; there is a large legacy of recordings, mostly on the RCA Victor and Columbia labels, many of which are available on CD.^[2][3][4][5]

References

Bibliography

• James A Drake and Kristin Beall Ludecke, ed (1999). Lily Pons: A Centennial Portrait. Amadeus Press. ISBN 1574670476. 

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Lily Pons

• Lily Pons at the Internet Movie Database
• Lily Pons at Allmovie
• Lily Pons at Allmusic
• Pons bio from BassoCantante.com
• Lily Pons at Find a Grave