Antonio Paoli - Last Years

Last Years

Even with this busy agenda, Paoli's financial situation remained strained. After living in New York City for almost the entire year of 1927, Paoli decided to come back to Puerto Rico to live and work with his sister Amalia, giving voice lessons at the Academia Paoli. Paoli also helped produce Othello at the Municipal Theater in San Juan. For the next two decades Paoli's main concern would be teaching at the Paoli Academy with Amalia. In 1928, the tenor performed Verdi's Otello entirely for the last time in San Juan, Puerto Rico. This was his last performance on stage. It took place at the San Juan Municipal Theater, known today as the Tapia Theater. In 1935, the government of Puerto Rico named the San Juan Municipal Theater in his honor, changing its name to Teatro Paoli. In 1929, his wife Josephine died and a year later he married Adelaida Bonini, from Rimini, Italy, and whom he affectionately called "Adina". He gave his last singing performance in 1942, while commemorating the one-year anniversary of the death of his sister, Amalia Paoli. The service was conducted at the Chapel of the University of the Sacred Heart (Santurce).

Paoli died of prostate cancer in San Juan on August 24, 1946, and was buried in the Puerto Rico Memorial Cemetery in Carolina, Puerto Rico. On April 13, 2005, Paoli's remains, and those of his (second) wife Adina Bonini (who had died in May, 1978) were exhumed and transferred to Ponce's Román Baldorioty de Castro National Pantheon and buried by the base of his statue.