Raoul Jobin

Raoul Jobin was born in Quebec City in April 1906 and studied at the Quebec Conservatory before moving to Paris in 1930 to continue his training at the Conservatoire de Paris. He made his début at the Paris Opéra in 1930 as Tybalt in Gounod’s *Roméo et Juliette*, and from 1936 was a principal lyric tenor at both the Paris Opéra and the Opéra-Comique, where he sang the major French operatic repertoire through the late 1930s and the war years.

He emerged as one of the leading French-Canadian tenors of the international operatic stage. His central repertoire was the French roles — Faust, Don José in *Carmen*, des Grieux in both *Manon* operas, the title role in *Werther*, Hoffmann in *Les contes d’Hoffmann*, Aeneas in *Les Troyens*, and Vincent in *Mireille*. He sang regularly at the Metropolitan Opera (from 1940 to 1950, where his Faust, Don José and Hoffmann became reference performances), at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, and across the South American operatic circuit. He returned to Canada permanently in 1956 to teach at the Quebec Conservatory and the École Vincent-d’Indy.

Jobin died in Quebec City in January 1974. Music Preserved’s archive includes a range of his French operatic work from the 1940s and 1950s.