Lily Pons facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Lily Pons
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Lily Pons, ca. 1937
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| Born |
Alice Joséphine Pons
April 12, 1898 Draguignan, France
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| Died | February 13, 1976 (aged 77) Dallas, Texas, U.S.
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| Resting place | Cimetière du Grand Jas, Cannes |
| Nationality | France (U.S. after 1940) |
| Occupation | opera singer, actress |
| Years active | 1920s–1970s |
| Known for | Metropolitan Opera coloratura soprano |
| Spouse(s) |
August Mesritz
(m. 1930; div. 1933) |
Lily Pons (born Alice Joséphine Pons on April 12, 1898 – died February 13, 1976) was a famous French-American opera singer and actress. She had a very active career from the late 1920s until the early 1970s.
As an opera singer, Lily Pons was known as a coloratura soprano. This means she could sing very high notes and perform difficult, fast musical passages. She was especially famous for her roles in operas like Lakmé and Lucia di Lammermoor.
Lily Pons performed nearly 300 times at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. This was between 1931 and 1960. She also sang as a guest artist in many opera houses around the world.
Besides opera, she had a successful career singing concerts. She made three musical films for RKO Pictures from 1935 to 1937. She also appeared on popular TV shows like The Ed Sullivan Show. In 1955, she was the main star for the first broadcast of Sunday Night at the London Palladium.
Lily Pons recorded many songs, including both classical and popular music. The French government honored her with the Croix de Lorraine and the Légion d'honneur.
She was also very good at promoting herself. Women's magazines often shared her ideas on fashion and home decorating. She appeared in advertisements for Lockheed airplanes, Knox gelatin, and Libby's tomato juice. A town in Maryland even named itself after her, called Lilypons. She would send her Christmas cards from there!
Opera News magazine said in 2011 that Lily Pons was one of the first singers to use marketing so well. They said only Luciano Pavarotti was as good at using mass media to become famous.
Early Life and Training
Lily Pons was born in Draguignan, a town near Cannes, France. Her father was French, and her mother was Italian.
She started studying piano at the Paris Conservatory. She won first prize when she was just 15 years old. When World War I began in 1914, she moved to Cannes with her mother and younger sister.
In Cannes, she played piano and sang for soldiers. These events were held to support the French troops. She also performed at the famous Hotel Carlton, which had become a hospital. Her mother worked there as a volunteer nurse.
In 1925, she began taking singing lessons in Paris. Later, she studied singing in New York.
Later Life and Legacy
Lily Pons passed away from pancreatic cancer in Dallas, Texas, when she was 77 years old. Her body was returned to her birthplace in France. She was buried in the Cimetière du Grand Jas in Cannes.
A small village in Frederick County, Maryland, is named Lilypons in her honor. It is about 10 miles south of Frederick, Maryland.
The famous composer George Gershwin was writing a piece of music for Lily Pons when he died in 1937. The music was not finished, but it was later completed by Michael Tilson Thomas. It was simply called For Lily Pons.
Lily Pons had a pet ocelot named Ita. An ocelot is a wild cat. She gave Ita to the New York Zoological Gardens because it became too wild to keep in her apartment. She had received the pet from a friend in Brazil.
Lily Pons was even made fun of in a cartoon called The Woods Are Full of Cuckoos. In the cartoon, she was shown as "Lily Swans." In the movie Florence Foster Jenkins, Lily Pons is played by the singer Aida Garifullina.
Recordings and Films
In the late 1930s, Lily Pons made three movies for RKO. She also left behind many recordings of her singing. Most of these were on the RCA Victor and Columbia labels. Many of her recordings are still available today on LPs and CDs.
Images for kids
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Pons in a costume from I Dream Too Much, 1935
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Lily Pons on January 8, 1945, visiting soldiers in Bengal, India
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Her grave in Cannes, France
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