Lily Pons

Lily Pons (born April 12, 1898, Draguignan, near Cannes, France—died Feb. 13, 1976, Dallas, Texas, U.S.) was a French-born American coloratura soprano known for her vocal range, musical skill, and warmth of expression. She was associated with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City for more than 30 years.

Pons was of French and Italian parentage. As a child she played the piano, and at age 13 she entered the Paris Conservatory. Ill health and World War I interrupted her studies for several years, but after the war she began playing ingenue roles in Paris under the name Lily Pons. She left the theatre in 1923 upon her marriage to August Mesritz, who encouraged her to study singing. In 1925 she began taking lessons from Alberti di Gorostiaga. In 1928 she made her operatic debut in the title role of Léo Delibes’s Lakmé at the Mulhouse Opera in Mulhouse, Alsace, France. After a year or so of singing in opera houses in the French provinces, Pons went to the United States and made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York City, in January 1931 in Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor. Her brilliant coloratura soprano was an immediate critical and popular success. Her beauty, diminutive figure, and marked dramatic ability made her a favourite with audiences for a quarter of a century, and she was long considered the most glamorous star on the operatic stage. She remained with the Metropolitan for more than three decades as a principal soprano famed for French and Italian coloratura parts, including those in Donizetti’s La Fille du régiment (The Daughter of the Regiment) and Vincenzo Bellini’s La sonnambula. (The Sleepwalker). She was the first soprano in 50 years who could reach the high F that Delibes wrote in the “Bell Song” in Lakmé.

Pons appeared in several motion pictures, including I Dream Too Much (1935), That Girl from Paris (1936), and Hitting a New High (1937), and she was also a popular radio performer. In 1938, having divorced her first husband, she married conductor André Kostelanetz. In the same year she was awarded the Legion of Honor by France. She became a naturalized American citizen in 1940. She and Kostelanetz made numerous highly successful joint concert tours until their divorce in 1958. Pons effectively retired as the Met’s reigning diva in 1956, after a gala celebration of her 25th anniversary there, although her formal retirement did not occur until 1964. Her last public performance was in May 1972 at a Promenade concert of the New York Philharmonic, with Kostelanetz conducting. A community in Maryland was named Lilypons in her honour.

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