Lily Pons

At 77 years old, Lily Pons physical status not available right now. We will update Lily Pons's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Alice Joséphine Pons (April 12, 1898-February 13, 1976), better known as Lily Pons, was a French-American operatic soprano and actress who worked from the late 1920s to the early 1970s.

She specialized in the coloratura soprano repertoire as an opera singer, and was particularly identified with the title roles in Lakmé and Lucia di Lammermoor.

Pons spent a long time with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, where she appeared in nearly 300 times between 1931 and 1960. She had a fruitful and lucrative career as a concert singer until she resigned in 1973 from appearances.

She made three RKO Pictures document films from 1935 to 37.

She has appeared on radio and television, appearing on various television shows, including The Ed Sullivan Show, The Colgate Comedy Hour, and The Dave Garroway Show.

In 1955, she led the bill for the first broadcast of what became a classic television series, The London Palladium.

She has released scores of albums, specializing in classical and popular music.

The Government of France granted her the Croix de Lorraine and the Légion d'honneur. Pons was also adept at converting herself into a recognizable cultural icon.

Her views on fashion and home decorating were often published in women's magazines, and she appeared in Lockheed planes, Knox gelatin, and Libby's tomato juice advertisements.

After her, a town in Maryland named itself, and the singer then proceeded to have all her Christmas cards sent from Lilypons, Maryland.

"Pons advertised herself with a sort of marketing savvy that no singer ever had before, and very few have since; only Luciano Pavarotti was so good at exploiting the mass media."

Early life and education

Pons was born in Draguignan, France, to a French father, Léonard Louis Auguste Pons, and Maria (née Naso), an Italian-born mother, later known as Marie Pétronille Pons. She began studying piano at the Paris Conservatory, winning the first prize at the age of 15. She and her mother and younger sister Juliette (born December 22, 1902 – died 1995) went to Cannes, where they played piano and sang for soldiers at receptions in favour of the French troops and later, where her mother and father worked as a volunteer nurse orderly.

Begined by soprano Dyna Beumer and August Mesritz, a burgeoning publisher who promised to fund her singing, she began taking singing lessons in Paris with Alberto de Gorostiaga in 1925. She then studied with Alice Zeppilli in New York. Pons married Mesritz, her first husband, on October 15, 1930, and spent the next several years as a housewife. On December 7, 1933, the couple announced their divorce.

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Career

Pons made her opera debut in the title role of Léo Delibes' Lakmé at Mulhouse in 1928, during Reynaldo Hahn's reign, and she went on to perform many coloratura roles in French provincial opera houses. She was discovered by dramatic tenor/impresario Giovanni Zenatello, who carried her to New York to audition for Giulio Gatti-Casazza, the Metropolitan Opera's general manager. After Amelita Galli-Curci's retirement in January, 1930, the Met needed a star coloratura. Pons was immediately engaged by Gatti-Casazza, and the RCA Victor also signed a recording deal.

Pons, a first-named in the United States, made her unheralded Met debut on January 3, 1931, as Lucia di Lammermoor of Donizetti, and the spelling of her first name was changed to "Lily." Her performance received brisk kudos. She rose to fame as a singer and inherited the bulk of Galli-Curci's most important coloratura roles. She spent most of her time in the United States before this point. In 1940, she became a naturalized citizen of the United States. She was married to conductor Andre Kostelanetz from 1938 to 1958. They built a house in Palm Springs, California, in 1955.

Pons was a principal soprano at the Met for 30 years, appearing 300 times in ten roles from 1931 to 1960. Lucia's (93 performances), Lakmé (50 performances), Gilda in Verdi's Rigoletto (49 performances), and Rosina in Rossini's The Barber of Seville were her most popular performances. In 1939, she attracted a record audience of over 300,000 to Chicago's Grant Park Music Festival, which was also a free concert.

Pons dropped her fall and winter season in New York in 1944 and instead toured with the United StatesO, delighting troops with her singing. Andre Kostelanetz, her husband, commanded a band of American soldiers as an accompaniment to her voice. In 1944, the two served at military bases in North Africa, Italy, the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, India, and Burma. The heat of the sun at the outdoor performances was so overbearing that Pons, who was always wearing a strapless evening gown, held wet towels to her head between numbers.

In 1945, the tour continued through China, Belgium, France, and Germany in a show near the front lines. She toured the United States after returning home, breaking attendance records in Milwaukee, which saw 30,000 people attend her appearance on July 20, 1945. She appeared in Mexico City last month, also directed by Gaetano Merola.

The Blood of a Poet's screenplay and accompanying essays by Jean Cocteau were turned into English, describing his film "this beautiful piece of French visual art."

Olympia in Jacques Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann, Philine in Ambroise Thomas's La sonnambula, Mé in Donizetti's The Daughter of the Regiment, and La Reserva in Donizetti's Linda di Chamounix were among her repertoire appearances. Pons' last major new role (he learned the role during her first season at the Met) was Violetta in La traviata, which she appeared at the San Francisco Opera. Pons found another role in Debussy's opera Pelléas et Melisande, but not because she was confident that she felt soprano Bidu Sayo owned the role; and secondly, because the tessitura lay mainly in the middle register of the soprano voice rather than in the higher register. She sang "Caro nome" from Rigoletto as part of a gala performance at the Met on December 14, 1960.

She appeared at the Opéra Garnier in Paris, the Royal Opera House in London, La Monnaie in Brussels, Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, and the Chicago Opera. Lucia to the Edgardo of 21-year-old Plácido Domingo at the Fort Worth Opera in 1962. Pons appeared on NBC's The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford on February 11, 1960.

Although Pons continued to perform in concerts since retiring, her biggest triumph came in May 1972, when the news media announced that she would return from retirement to perform a concert at Lincoln Center under the baton of Andre Kostelanetz, her former husband. All tickets to the concert were sold within an hour of being available. The program of the historic concert, which took place on Wednesday evening, May 31, 1972, did not include any of Pons' coloratura arias, but did include ones more suited to her age range at age 74. She sang "Estabilitate" among the songs in her set's set list, and after the conclusion, she received a long ovation.

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