Lily Pons - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

Born as Alice Joséphine Pons in Draguignan near Cannes, to a French father, Léonard Louis Auguste Antoine Pons, and an Italian-born mother, Maria (née Naso), later known as Marie Pétronille Pons. She 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 December 22, 1902 – died 1995) 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 worked as a volunteer nurse orderly.

On October 15, 1921, Pons married her first husband August Mesritz, a successful publisher, and spent the next several years as a housewife. The marriage would end in divorce on December 30, 1933. In 1925, encouraged by soprano Dyna Beumer and Mesritz who agreed to fund her singing career, she started taking singing lessons in Paris with Alberto de Gorostiaga. She later studied singing with Alice Zeppilli in New York.