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Since her marriage to Kostelanetz, Pons has become the top attraction at summer concerts in U. S. parks and stadiums. The coloratura voice, which even musical dopes can tell is high-priced, accounts for part of her drawing power, but not all. Andre Kostelanetz is a competent stick-waver, and on records and the radio he plays, not symphonies and not jazz, but the kind of music plain people really like: his arrangements of "standard" pieces, Victor Herbert and such, beautifully done up in balanced brass, reed and string tones, as rich as a lobster Newburg well laced with sherry. In summer, the team of Pons & Kostelanetz earns $5,500 a night. The 300,000 people they have attracted to Chicago's Grant Park of a summer evening is the biggest crowd ever assembled to hear good music. Says Lily Pons: "On m'a dit que only dictators peuvent get crowds like that." And, underlining Kosty's part in the partnership, she has trilled: "A woman who is not happy cannot sing nice."
* From middle C to G in alt (above high C).
* In 1918 Frieda Hempel, as Marie, interpolated Keep the Home Fires Burning in the opera.
* Lucia, Rigoletto, Mignon, Barber of Seville, Linda di Chamounix, Somnambula, Coq d'Or, Tales of Hoffmann, Lakmé (her favorite).