Jean Mollien

I wish to thank Christian Torrent for the recording.

I wish to thank Georges Voisin for the recording.

Jean Mollien is the perfect example of a post-WWII singer on whom almost no information is available – as, alas, with so many singers of that generation, particularly in France.

He sang a lot for the French radio, both single arias and complete operas, from 1949 to 1974; a fascinating, incredibly varied and rare repertory that included works: Richard Coeur de Lion, Le médecin malgré lui by Gounod, Le roi malgré lui by Chabrier, Fervaal by d'Indy, Marouf, Benvenuto Cellini by Berlioz, Padmavati by Roussel (twice, in different roles!), Jaromir Weinberger's Švanda dudák, Phryné and La princesse jaune by Saint-Saëns, Prométhée by Fauré, Maximilien by Milhaud, Dallapiccola's Volo di notte, Le muletier by Hérold, Massenet's Sapho and Grisélidis, Le roi d'Yvetot by Ibert, Schumann's Genoveva, Madame Chrysanthème and Béatrice by Messager, Mozart i Salieri and Skazanie o nevidimom grade Kitezhe (The legend of the invisible city of Kitezh) by Rimskij-Korsakov, Musorgskij's operatic fragment Zhenitba (The marriage), La danseuse de Tanagra by Henri Hirschmann, La fête au village voisin, Ma tante Aurore and Le nouveau seigneur de village, all three by Boieldieu, L'omelette à la Follembuche by Delibes, Lazzari's La tour du feu, Le rêve by Bruneau, Scemo by Alfred Bachelet, Saint Julien by Erlanger, Venise by Tiarko Richepin, La véridique histoire du docteur and Le bourgeois de Falaise by Maurice Thiriet, Le rossignol de Saint-Malo by Paul Le Flem, Perkain by Jean Poueigh, Monsieur de La Palisse by Claude Terrasse, Novella by Cesare Brero, Hans le joueur de flûte by Louis Ganne, Die Verschworenen by Schubert, Corinne by André Lavagne, La chartreuse de Parme by Henri Sauguet, Polyphème by Jean Cras, La main de gloire by Jean Françaix, Prométhée enchaîné by Maurice Emmanuel, La petite sirène by Germaine Tailleferre (radio opera, world premiere, 30 September 1960), Rasputin's end by Nicolas Nabokov, Sabbataï Zevi by Alexandre Tansman, L'Atlantide and Ulisse ou le beau périple by Henri Tomasi, Sardanapale by Jean-Jacques Grunenwald, Macbeth by Ernest Bloch, La jeunesse de Goya by Tony Aubin, La mort de l'empereur by Lucien Ferrier-Jourdain, Colomba by Henri Büsser, La farce du glouton by Eugène Bozza, Capitaine Bruno by Pierre Wissmer – all in complete or near-complete radio recordings! And this was only the unusual repertory; there was no shortage of standard works, either. Just a varied as the musical styles were Mollien's roles, a wild mix of lyrical and dramatic, of supporting and leading roles, from Guillot de Morfontaine to Hoffmann, from the Judge in Ballo in maschera to Manrico, from Hadji in Lakmé to Grigorij. All in all, an output that does both Mollien and the French national radio ORTF honor.

So Mollien was certainly busy on the radio, but he also sang on stage; whether he did so just very occasionally, or whether he is just so ill-documented, or both, I cannot decide. In any case, I only found him as Sou-Chong in Lausanne in February 1957; and in a Cavalleria/Pagliacci pairing (presumably as Beppe) with the troupe of the Mulhouse theater in Colmar in fall 1955. (Obviously, he must have appeared in that production in Mulhouse, too, but I found no dates for it.) And in February 1963, the Marseille opera had hired André Mallabrera as Hoffmann; when it turned out that the part was really too heavy for him, Mollien saved the production, and obviously did a very good job.