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A notable achievement of the Met's Manager Edward Johnson has been to hire lookers as well as singers. No other opera house of comparable artistic standards boasts such svelte and glamorous ladies as Czech Soprano Jarmila Novotna, Brazilian Soprano Bidu Sayao, U. S. Sopranos Helen Jepson, Grace Moore, Hilda Burke, Rose Bampton and Eleanor Steber (a West Virginia debutante of this month), U. S. Contraltos Risë Stevens and Gladys Swarthout.
Best Seller. But Manager Johnson's best-selling good-looker dates from the regime of his predecessor, Giulio Gatti-Casazza. Lily Pons has exuded practiced charm, emitted light but flawless high notes at the Met for just ten years.
The name is pronounced (approximately) to rhyme with lawns, but most people rhyme it with bronze. Lily Pons was born 36 years ago in Cannes, in the south of France, was named Alice Joséphine by her Italian mother and French father. Papa Pons was an automobile engineer who once attempted to drive from Paris to Peiping. After nearly starving in Tibet, he was towed into China.
Lily studied piano at the Paris Conservatoire, took a prize at 13, later went on the Paris stage. Her extraordinary vocal cords contrived few public beeps, and no acrobatics at all, until after she was married—to August Mesritz, a wealthy, middle-aged Dutch lawyer and journalist. Husband Mesritz resolved that Lily should sing, took her to Alberti di Gorostiaga, an elegant Spaniard who ignored French gender but knew everything about bel canto singing technique. Exclaimed di Gorostiaga: "Mlle. Pons, he is a charming, a gentle lady, he is the most hard-working pupil of my life, he has the range of Patti."*
Within a year Soprano Pons made her debut, in 1928, in the provincial French opera of Mulhouse, Alsace. Her voice was heard in a few more second-string opera houses—Cannes, Vichy, La Baule—and, still unknown in France, pricked the ears of a couple of tourists. They were Maria Gay, an oldtime opera singer, and her husband Giovanni Zenatello. They took up the innocent Lily, promised her an audition at the Metropolitan. Within a few months Lily Pons was taking 16 Metropolitan curtain calls in Lucia, 30 a few nights later in Rigoletto. Later the Zenatellos sued for the right to manage her, take 15% of her earnings, lost their case.
Lily Pons divorced Husband Mesritz seven years ago in France. She announced her engagement to a surgeon from Hamburg, Germany, but nothing came of that betrothal. The name of Mme. Pons began to be obbligatoed by that of balding, businesslike, Russian-born Mr. Kostelanetz. Lengthy was Kosty's courtship, during which he crossed the continent so often that U. S. airlines gave him a silver mug as their No. 1 passenger. He also dispatched to Singer Pons, in Hollywood, a 300-lb. piano.
Traditionally, divas are prey to harmless superstitions. Lily Pons, born with a caul on a Friday the 13th, counts 13 her lucky number. She asks for room 1313 in hotels, buys souvenirs (like South American birds) by the baker's dozen; her house in Silvermine, Conn. bears the street number 13. So, by her and Kosty's account, she held out for 13 proposals of marriage, then straightway accepted. They were married in June 1938.