Amalia Paoli was a Puerto Rican

Puerto Rican people

A Puerto Rican is a person who was born in Puerto Rico.Puerto Ricans born and raised in the continental United States are also sometimes referred to as Puerto Ricans, although they were not born in Puerto Rico...

 soprano. She was the sister of the prominent Puerto Rican tenor Antonio Paoli

Antonio Paolí

Antonio Paoli was a Puerto Rican tenor. He was known at the height of his fame as "The King of Tenors and The Tenor of Kings." He is considered to be the first Puerto Rican to reach international fame in the musical arts...

, but was herself a recognized musician in her own right.

First years

Amalia Paoli was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico

Ponce, Puerto Rico

Ponce is both a city and a municipality in the southern part of Puerto Rico. The city is the seat of the municipal government.The city of Ponce, the fourth most populated in Puerto Rico, and the most populated outside of the San Juan metropolitan area, is named for Juan Ponce de León y Loayza, the...

. She was the daughter of Domingo Paoli Marcatentti, born in Corsica

Corsican immigration to Puerto Rico

Corsican immigration to Puerto Rico came about as a result of various economic and political changes in the mid-19th century Europe; among those factors were the social-economic changes which came about in Europe as a result of the Second Industrial Revolution, political discontent and widespread...

, and Amalia Marcano Intriago, who was originally from Isla Margarita

Isla Margarita

Margarita Island is the largest island of the state of Nueva Esparta in Venezuela, situated in the Caribbean Sea, off the northeastern coast of the country. The state also contains two other smaller islands: Coche and Cubagua. The capital city of Nueva Esparta is La Asunción, located in a river...

 in Venezuela

Venezuela

Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...

.

Debut

She first broke into the public eye with performances at Teatro La Perla. In 1880, Paoli, when only 19 years old, performed at La Perla in Emilio Arrieta

Emilio Arrieta

Pascual Juan Emilio Arrieta Corera was a Spanish composer.Arrieta was born in Puente la Reina, Navarre, and died in Madrid...

's opera, Marina.

Move to Europe

Paoli succeeded in catching the eye of what historian and Puerto Rico State Historic Preservation Officer Juan Llanes Santos described as "well-connected people", who moved the young woman to Spain in 1883, where she auditioned for Isabel de Borbon. The sister of the King

Alfonso XII of Spain

Alfonso XII was king of Spain, reigning from 1874 to 1885, after a coup d'état restored the monarchy and ended the ephemeral First Spanish Republic.-Early life and paternity:Alfonso was the son of Queen Isabella II of Spain, and...

 and Princess of Asturias

Princess of Asturias

This is a list of women who held the title Princess of Asturias by marriage.The title was created in 1388 for the future Henry III of Castile and Catherine of Lancaster. A part of the pact was to gran the young couple the title of Prince and Princess of Asturias, which was modelled after that of...

, Isabel provided her patronage

Patronage

Patronage is the support, encouragement, privilege, or financial aid that an organization or individual bestows to another. In the history of art, arts patronage refers to the support that kings or popes have provided to musicians, painters, and sculptors...

 to Paoli, securing singing lessons for her from Napoleon Verger who was, according to Santos, "the most famous singing teacher at the time in Madrid, Napoleon Verger." Paoli immediately brought her younger siblings to live with her, and, in 1896, with the assistance of the Royal family, secured a royal scholarship for her brother Antonio

Antonio Paolí

Antonio Paoli was a Puerto Rican tenor. He was known at the height of his fame as "The King of Tenors and The Tenor of Kings." He is considered to be the first Puerto Rican to reach international fame in the musical arts...

 that would turn him into a world renown tenor

Tenor

The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...

.

Later years

In the early 1920s, Paoli moved back to Puerto Rico where she founded a music school in Santurce

Santurce, San Juan, Puerto Rico

Santurce is a district of San Juan, Puerto Rico.-Summary:Santurce is one of the top ten most populated areas of the island holding Miramar, Loíza, Isla Grande, Barrio Obrero, and Condado as main cultural hot spots for art, music, cuisine, fashion, hotels, technology, multimedia, film, textile and...

 called the Academia Paoli. She died in 1941. There, she joined the Suffragist Social League, one of a number of renowned women artists to do so.

Legacy

She is recognized in Ponce at the Park of the Illustrious Ponce Citizens.

See also

• List of Puerto Ricans
• Amalia Paoli: La Diva Ponceña. By Haydée E. Reichard de Cancio, Ph.D. Revista Hola Puerto Rico. 17 September 2010.

Sources

• Santos, Juan Llanes (Historian and State Historic Preservation Officer, Certifying Officer, State Historic Preservation Office (San Juan, Puerto Rico). August 11, 2009. In National Register of Historic Places Inventory – Registration Form – Casa Paoli
  Casa Paoli
  Casa Paoli on 2648 Mayor Street, Ponce, Puerto Rico, is nationally significant as the birthplace of Antonio Emilio Paoli y Marcano , a tenor who was the "first Puerto Rican to reach international recognition in the performing arts" and one of the most outstanding opera singers of all times...
  
  . United States Department of the Interior. National Park Service. (Washington, D.C.) Listing Reference Number 09000769.