Lily Pons

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lily_Pons

Lily Pons (April 12, 1898 – February 13, 1976) was a French-American operatic soprano and actress who had an active career from the late 1920s through the early 1970s. As an opera singer she specialized in the coloratura soprano repertoire and was particularly associated with the title roles in Léo Delibes' Lakmé and Gaetano Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor. In addition to appearing as a guest artist with many opera houses internationally, Pons enjoyed a long association with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City where she performed nearly 300 times from 1931-1960.

Pons also had a very successful and lucrative career as a concert singer which continued until her retirement from performance in 1973. From 1935-1937 she made three musical films for RKO Pictures. She also made numerous appearances on radio and on television, performing on variety programs like The Ed Sullivan Show, The Colgate Comedy Hour, and The Dave Garroway Show among others. She made dozens of records; recording both classical and popular music. She was awarded the Croix de Lorraine and the Légion d'honneur by the Government of France.

Pons was also savvy at making herself into a marketable cultural icon. Her opinions on fashion and home decorating were frequently reported in women's magazines, and she appeared as the face for Lockheed airplanes, Knox gelatin and Libby's tomato juice advertisements. A town in Maryland named itself after her, and thereafter the singer contrived to have all her Christmas Cards posted from Lilypons, Maryland. Opera News wrote, "Pons promoted herself with a kind of marketing savvy that no singer ever had shown before, and very few have since; only Luciano Pavarotti was quite so successful at exploiting the mass media."

Early life and education

Born as Alice 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, she moved with her mother and younger sister Juliette (born 22 December 1902) to Cannes, 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 October 1921 Pons married her first husband August Mesritz, a successful publisher, and spent the next several years as a bourgeois housewife. In 1925, encouraged by soprano Dyna Beumer and Mesritz who agreed to fund her singing career, she started taking singing lessons from Alberto de Gorostiaga in Paris. She later studied singing with soprano Alice Zeppilli in New York City.

Career

Pons 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.

She was discovered by the dramatic tenor/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 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. From here on out, her career was mainly based in the United States, and she became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1940. From 1938 to 1958, she was married to the conductor André Kostelanetz.

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).

Pons drew a record crowd of over 300,000 to Chicago's Grant Park Music Festival in 1939 for a free concert.

In 1944 during World War II, Pons canceled her fall and winter season in New York and instead toured with the USO, entertaining troops with her singing. Her husband Andre Kostelanetz directed a band composed of American soldiers as accompaniment to her voice. The pair performed at military bases in North Africa, Italy, the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, India and Burma in 1944. In places, the heat of the sun at the outdoor performances was so overbearing that Pons, 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—a performance near the front lines. Returning home, she toured the U.S., breaking attendance records in cities such as Milwaukee at which 30,000 attended her performance on July 20, 1945. Pons also played Mexico City in July, directed by Gaetano Merola.

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 title role in Delibes' Lakmé, 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 new role Lily Pons performed (she had actually learned the role during her first season at The Met) was Violetta in Traviata, which she sang at the San Francisco Opera. Another role Pons learned, but decided not to sing despite the fact she was French, was Melisande in Debussy's opera "Pelleas et Melisande"; the reason, as she confided in a later interview, was twofold: first, because she felt the soprano, Bidu Sayao, owned the role; and second, because the tessitura lay mainly in the middle register of the soprano voice rather than in the higher register. 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. Her final opera appearance was as Lucia to the Edgardo of twenty-one-year-old Plácido Domingo in 1962 at the Fort Worth Opera. She continued to sing concerts until 1973.

On February 11, 1960, Pons appeared on NBC's The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford.

Radio, television, and film

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).

Death

She died of pancreatic cancer in Dallas, Texas, aged 77. 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, was her sole 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.

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.

Boston and Maine Railroad was buying a new class of locomotives in the 1930s. The railroad had a contest for school kids to name the new engines. The winning suggestion for engine 4108 was "Lily Pons".[citation needed]

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.

Alice-Joséphine Pons, dite Lily Pons (Draguignan, 12 avril 1898 – Dallas, 13 février 1976) est une cantatrice soprano française, naturalisée américaine en 1940.

Biographie

Jeunesse et débuts

Née au 11 Grande Rue à Draguignan, Alice-Joséphine Pons est la fille de Léonard-Louis-Auguste-Antoine Pons, un imprimeur de 22 ans né dans la même ville (qui participe en 1907 au rallye automobile Pékin-Paris), et de Marie-Pétronille Naso, une couturière de 23 ans originaire de Saluces en Italie1. La famille s'installe en 1904 à Cannes.

Elle intègre la classe de piano du Conservatoire de Paris3 à l'âge de 13 ans et en sort avec un premier prix à 15 ans. En 1920, elle apparaît dans quelques revues au Concert Mayol et aux Variétés, aux côtés de Max Dearly. Elle commence à prendre des cours de chant avec Jean Maubert, avant que ce dernier ne la recommande au grand professeur Alberto di Gorostiaga. Se découvrant une voix de soprano colorature hors du commun, elle débute à Mulhouse en 1928 dans Lakmé de Léo Delibes sous la direction de Philippe Flon. Lakmé deviendra son rôle-fétiche (avec Lucia di Lammermoor). Sa plastique parfaite lui permet de porter à cette occasion une robe audacieuse qui lui dévoile le nombril.

Elle se produit dès lors à travers toute la France dans La Bohème, Hänsel und Gretel, La Flûte enchantée (la Reine de la nuit) sous la direction de Reynaldo Hahn au Casino de Cannes, ou Les Noces de Figaro (Cherubino), et enregistre une série d'airs pour le label Odéon. Si Jacques Rouché lui refuse l'entrée de l'Opéra de Parisa 1, elle attire l'attention d'un couple de chanteurs, Maria Gay et Giovanni Zenatello, qui la recommandent aussitôt au directeur du Metropolitan Opera de New-York, Giulio Gatti-Casazza4.

La « petite fiancée » de l'Amérique

S'étant mariée le 15 octobre 1930 avec l'éditeur August Mesritz, Lily Pons fait des débuts fracassants devant le public américain le 4 janvier 1931 dans Lucia di Lammermoor, aux côtés de Beniamino Gigli et Ezio Pinza. Elle y restera vingt-huit ans, y chantant avec autant de succès Lucia, Rigoletto (Gilda), Le Barbier de Séville (Rosina), Les Contes d'Hoffmann (Olympia), Mignon (Philine), Lakmé, La sonnambula (Amina), Linda di Chamounix, Le Coq d'or et La Fille du régimenta . Elle se produit parallèlement en concert et enregistre de nombreux titres pour la Victor Talking Machine Company.

Hollywood lui fait tourner quelques films mineurs, desquels se détache en 1937 La Femme en cage de Raoul Walsh, dans lequel elle incarne une jeune chanteuse de cabaret qui rêve de devenir grande chanteuse d’opéra.

Le 7 août 1936, 26 410 spectateurs viennent l'écouter chanter des airs d'opéra au Hollywood Bowl (ce qui constitue encore à ce jour le record d'audience). Elle est accompagnée par l'Orchestre philharmonique de Los Angeles sous la direction d'Andre Kostelanetz, qu'elle épouse en 1938 (elle a divorcé de son premier mari peu de temps après son arrivée aux États-Unis) et avec qui elle organise des tournées de concert populaire.

Ayant obtenu la nationalité américaine en 1941, elle chante durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale aux Indes, en Chine et en Birmanie pour les soldats alliés. Dans ses Entretiens avec André Parinaud en juin 1963, Marlene Dietrich affirme que Lily Pons était la seule artiste avec elle au front pour soutenir les troupes américaines en France pendant l’hiver 1944. Lors d'une émission radio avec John Ardoin (The Collector's Corner) Lily Pons confia avoir parcouru 100 000 miles (env. 160 000 km) à cette époque. C'est dans ce contexte qu'elle célébra aux États-Unis l'annonce de la libération de Paris : « En août 1944, on apprit à New York la libération de Paris. Ce fut un jour de prodigieux bonheur [%E2%80%A6]. Toute la Cinquième avenue fut pavoisée de drapeaux bleu, blanc, rouge. Une cérémonie fut improvisée sur la plaza du Rockefeller Center. Lily Pons chanta La Marseillaise. »

Choisie comme marraine par la 2e DB, c'est également à Lily Pons — qui se trouve à Paris pour interpréter Lakmé à l'Opéra-Comique le 10 avril 1945 — que le gouvernement français demande de chanter La Marseillaise au palais Garnier le 8 mai 1945 en présence, entre autres, du maréchal Juin ; le concert étant retransmis au-dehors, l'enthousiasme des Parisiens fut tel qu'il fallut sortir un piano sur le balcon de l'Opéra de Paris, et c'est ainsi que Lily Pons rechanta l'hymne français, mais cette fois pour 250 000 personnes[

Le Metropolitan Opera organise pour elle un grand concert le 3 mars 1956, le Lily Pons Gala, à l'occasion du 25e anniversaire de sa présence dans la maison.

À nouveau divorcée, Lily Pons se produit pour la dernière fois au Met en 1958 avant de mettre un terme définitif à sa carrière en 1962 à Fort Worth, dans le rôle de Lucia, aux côtés du jeune Plácido Domingo.

Dernières années

Elle n'apparaîtra plus sur scène que lors de deux ultimes concerts en 1972 puis en 1974 (elle a alors 76 ans). Elle se retire à Dallas où elle meurt d’un cancer du pancréas deux ans plus tard, mais est enterrée au cimetière du Grand Jas à Cannes, selon sa volonté.

Lily Pons n'a pas eu d'enfants. L'une de ses nièces, Viviane, épousa le chanteur Gérard Sabbat.

Distinctions

Lily Pons a reçu une étoile sur le Walk of Fame d'Hollywood, ainsi que les insignes d'officier de la Légion d'honneur, de commandeur du Mérite national et de commandeur des Arts et Lettres.

Une ville du Mariland porte le nom de Lillypons en son honneur

Wikipedia