lily pons
SOPRAN
APRIL 12TH, 1898

‘Really, what made the difference and turned  a success into a triumph were the high notes. That is to say: the very highest, the Ds and E flats, the E natural that would stop the show at the end of 'Caro nome', the Fs which because of the keys used would elevate the final utterance of Lucia,’ wrote J.B.Stearne about the ‘X-factor’ of Lily Pons.^[1]

The extraordinary career of coloratura soprano Lily Pons seems graced by good fortune. Born to parents of French-Italian extraction on the 12 April 1898 in Draguignan near Cannes, she was a piano student at the Paris Conservatoire from the age of 13.^[2] As a budding pianist, she carried off first prize in a contest at the tender age of 15, against older competitors. Nevertheless when a friend heard her sing she was persuaded to approach a famous singing teacher, Alberti de Gorostigiaga who recognised her enormous potential.^[3]

In 1928 – aged 30 – she made her operatic debut in Mulhouse in the title role of Lakmé, which would remain one of the staples of her repertoire. Pons ‘learned her trade’ in various provincial opera houses in her native France until she sang in Montpellier and was noted by the retired tenor Giovanni Zenatello and his wife Maria Gay, who immediately recognising her vocal gifts, brought her to the attention of Giulio Gatti-Casazza, then Director of the Metropolitan Opera in New York.^[4]

Gatti-Casazza in his own memoirs recalled, ‘She came here – and gave us an audition. It was extraordinary. She sang the Bell Songaus „Lakmé” and several other things, and we engaged her for the following season.’ Pons was in luck as Galli-Curci had left the Met the previous season and there was no coloratura soprano. Gatti-Casazza was well aware of the treasure that had been unearthed. Again in his own words, ‘I had given strict orders to the company that no word was to be uttered about her. I wanted her to make her debut without réklame and permit the public and the critics to judge from their own reactions, without preconceived prejudices, whatever they might be…. Unfortunately, however, the news leaked out to one of the papers after Lily Pons’s dress rehearsal.

Too late! The thing was done and it was not altogether to her advantage. Nevertheless, when Lily Pons made her debut on Saturday afternoon, January 3, 1931, in “Lucia di Lammermoor,” she became instantly a success. She sang throughout the remainder of the season in a number of different operas and, each time she sang, the theatre was full in spite of the financial depression.’^[5] Apropos the debut in Lucia, after ‘Caro nome’ the applause went on for ten minutes and at the end of the opera she took thirty curtain calls.^[6]

Lily Pons sang at the Met throughout the rest of her long career. As well as Lakmé and Lucia, her other ‘signature roles’ included Violetta, Gilda, Mignon, and Amina in la Sonnambula, and Marie in La Fille du Regiment. Such was her success that Gatti-Casazza later wrote, ‘The personality of the singer has a powerful effect on the public mind. Witness our season of 1931-32. What was our most successful opera?  Was it any one of the great masterpieces? It was a charming but not profound opera which brought the greatest receipts of all. That was Délibes’s “Lakmé,” with Miss Lily Pons, the justly popular young prima donna, in the title part.’^[7]It was surely the case that when Pons sang the world stopped to listen.

With such outstanding success Hollywood beckoned and she made several now mostly forgotten films. During the second world war she enthusiastically sang to servicemen across the world. In the judgement of Harold Simpson, ‘No other coloratura held the position of esteem Lily Pons gained in her hey-day, and it is not unlikely that she is infinitely more exciting in the flesh than her later records would convey.’^[8] This somewhat ambiguous praise reflects a view that in her later years the recordings show a decline. We will not judge. We know that she is a superstar in the firmament of legendary singers.