Émile Gallins

The parents of Émile Gallins were Belgian, but lived across the border in northern France: in Flers-Breucq when Émile was born, and soon in nearby Roubaix, where they ran a café-concert. Émile studied voice at the conservatory in Roubaix, then privately in Paris.

He made his debut in 1919 as Radames in Gent, where he stayed for two years, until 1921. From 1925 to 1927, Gallins was a member of La Monnaie. Between Gent and Brussels, he sang in Marseille, Algiers, and for three seasons in Antwerp. He was heard then in Lyon, Marseille again (where he appeared as Werther and in Février's Oletta, la fille du Corse in March 1929), Toulouse, Lille (Don José, October 1928; Pinkerton, November 1928), Algiers (Faust, November 1929). In 1930/31, he was a member of the Municipal Theater Mülhausen (today Mulhouse) and sang also in Colmar (with the Mulhouse troupe) or in Nancy.

References:
- L'Est Republicain, 19 February 1931
- Les Spectacles, 1 February 1924 and 2 November 1928
- Le Grand Écho du Nord de la France, 13 October 1928
- L'Express de Mulhouse, 11 September 1930
- Der Republikaner, 11 September and 4 October 1930
- Le Petit Provençal, 25 March 1929
- L'Écho d'Alger, 4 November and 22 December 1929
- Lyrica, 1 October 1923
- Journal de Roubaix, 28 January 1924
- Die Neue Welt, 31 January 1931
- Comoedia, 24 March 1929

Selected career facts
Gent
Werther (Massenet): Werther (1921)

Monnaie de Bruxelles
La légende du Tsar Saltan (Rimskij-Korsakov): Guidon (1925-1926, 12 représentations)
La route d'émeraude (De Boeck): Kobus Barent (1926-1927, 16 représentations)
Un songe d'une nuit d'été (Vreuls): Lysandre (1925-1926, 12 représentations)

Polydor, Paris about 1930
1277 bm		Lohengrin (Wagner): Aux bords lointains 							62011, 62009
1278 bm I	Les maîtres chanteurs de Nuremberg (Wagner): L'aube vermeille 	62012
12791/2 bm	Manon (Massenet): Je suis seul 									62010
12871/2 bm	Hérodiade (Massenet): Air de Jean 								62009
1639 bk 		Louise (Charpentier): Dans la cité lointaine 						42676
1640 bk 	Ave Maria (Gounod)												42674
1641 bk		Les deux sérénades (Leoncavallo) 									42678
1642 bk 		Werther (Massenet): Pourquoi me réveiller? 						42677
1643 bk		Chant hindou (Bemberg) 											42674, 42678

I wish to thank Christian Torrent for the discography, the pictures, two recordings (Louise, Werther) and the career facts (reference for bottom picture: the extraordinary photo collection of Claude-Pascal Perna).