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Pauline Julien. Singer, actress, songwriter, b Trois-Rivières, Que, 23 May 1928, d Montreal 1 Oct 1998. From about 1947 to 1951, she acted in Quebec City with the Comédiens de la Nef and in Montreal with the Compagnie du Masque. She married actor Jacques Galipeau in 1950. In 1952 she went to Paris, where she studied dramatic arts. Her daughter Pascale was born that year, and her son Nicolas in 1955. She began singing around 1954 in Paris productions and, with a repertoire of songs by Kurt Weill, Bertolt Brecht, Léo Ferré, and Boris Vian, in left-bank Parisien boîtes and on French radio and TV. From 1957, when she separated from Galipeau, to 1961, her career was divided between Montreal (where she made her debut at the cabaret Au St-Germain-des-Près) and Paris. She played Jenny 1961-2 in Weill and Brecht's L'Opéra de Quat'sous at Montreal's Théâtre du Nouveau-Monde. To her repertoire of Weill-Brecht songs, which she introduced to Quebec, she added material by Raymond Lévesque and Gilles Vigneault. Her first LP, Enfin ... Pauline Julien, was made in 1962, and her second, Pauline Julien, in 1963; these, coupled with performances in the company of Claude Gauthier and Claude Léveillée and several TV appearances in 1963, established her as a popular and affecting chanteuse. In 1964 she was the CBC's representative at the International Song Festival, Sopot, Poland. She won second prize (singing Vigneault's 'Jack Monoloy') and then embarked on a tour of the country. Julien's success came equally in Quebec and in Europe, as well as in English Canada. She appeared regularly on Quebec's leading stages (the Comédie-Canadienne, PDA, Le Patriote, Quebec City's Grand Théâtre, etc) and in Europe's major cities, in particular Paris (at the Théâtre de l'Est parisien, the Bobino, the Olympia, the Théâtre de la Ville, the Théâtre de la Renaissance, etc). She was hostess 1965-6 for CBC TV's 'Mon Pays, mes chansons.' In 1967 she toured the USSR (returning in 1975) and represented Quebec at the Primera Festival de la Cancion Popular in Cuba. She performed in Toronto in 1964 and 1968. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Julien's repertoire consisted exclusively of songs by Quebec writers. In 1968 she began to write song lyrics. Over the next decade she sang music by Jacques Crevier, François Dompierre, Claude Dubois, Jacques Perron, Michel Robidoux, Stéphane Venne, Robert Léger, Pierre Flynn, Gerry Boulet, Gaston Brisson, François Cousineau, and Jacques Marchand; each of the last three served at one time or another as her music director. She also composed songs to words by Michel Tremblay. During this period, Julien performed at the 1971 Mariposa Folk Festival; on tour in Ontario (1972); at Camp Fortune (near Ottawa, 1973); and at the NAC (1971, 1972, and 1974). She also appeared as an actress in the Quebec films La Terre à boire and Fabienne sans son Jules (1964), The Trial of the Swordfish (1969), Bulldozer (1971), Pleure donc pas Germaine (1972), and La Mort d'un bûcheron (1973). Julien was committed to political independence for Quebec (she declined an invitation to sing before Queen Elizabeth II at Charlottetown in 1964 and was detained during the Quebec crisis of 1970). Fittingly for her label 'The passionara of Quebec,' Julien also took up the feminist cause in the mid-1970s. She introduced the song 'La Moitié du monde est une femme' (written with Marchand) in 1975, and performed in Toronto the same year for the CBC TV program, 'Three Women,' with Maureen Forrester and Sylvia Tyson. Julien presented the show and LP Femmes de paroles 1977-8 in Quebec and in Europe to great acclaim. Also in the mid-1970s she restored Weill-Brecht to her repertoire, and in 1978, for Fernand Nault's ballet to Weill's Les Sept Péchés capitaux (The Seven Deadly Sins), she sang the role of Anna (danced by Sylvie Kinal-Chevalier), both for the premiere that year at the NAC and for an LP (Kébec-Disc KD-977). During this period, Julien also performed in Edmonton, Calgary, and Vancouver (1976), at the 1977 Guelph Spring Festival, and at the Festival of Nations at Glendon College in Toronto (1978). She toured western Canada in 1981. In the early 1980s, Pauline Julien undertook a yearly tour in France and Quebec. The 1982 LP Charade includes two of her great hits, 'L'Âme à la tendresse' and 'Mammy.' In 1985, with Où peut-on vous toucher?, she toured in Algeria, France (at the Théâtre de Paris), Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Italy, and Quebec (at Montreal's Club Soda). The LP of that same name includes texts by Suzanne Jacob, Luc Plamondon, and Anne Sylvestre. In 1985 she spent two and a half months in Népal, which she described in her book L'Échappé belle, Népal (Montreal 1985), written in collaboration with Denise Hébert. At that time, Julien decided not to undertake any more solo performances, but left the door open for joint productions. In 1987 she produced 'Gémeaux croisés' with Anne Sylvestre, which she had introduced in Paris, at Montreal's Espace GO, before leaving for Europe, after which she returned to the Spectrum in Montreal in 1990. That year, with the actress Hélène Loiselle, she gave a recital of Quebecois poetry, 'Voix parallèles,' at the Café de la PDA and at the Petit Champlain in Quebec City. During this period, Julien continued performing in the theatre, namely in Brecht-Weill's Grandeur et décadence de la ville de Mahogonny (1984), Heiner Müller's Rivages à l'abandon (1990), and Victor Lévy Beaulieu's La Maison cassée (1991). She and her husband, poet Gérald Godin (1938-1994), a Parti québécois culture minister who was her companion from 1961 and whom she married in 1990, were the subject of a NFB film Québec, un peu, beaucoup, passionnément, which was televised on CBC and on the PBS network in the USA. An activist, Julien also appeared at political rallies. In her last decade of life, Julien continued to appear in the theatre, including in Les Muses au musée at the Musée d'art contemporain in 1992. She travelled to Burkina-Faso with the humanitarian aid organization Canadian Centre for International Studies and Cooperation in 1993. Châtelaine published some of Julien's letters home from Africa in its July 1993 issue. She subsequently travelled to Rwanda in 1994. In her final years she suffered from degenerative aphasia, which affected her power of speech and imposed a partial paralysis. Julien was a singer known for her expressive power and sensitivity, qualities drawn equally from music and theatre. Jean Gascon, in La Patrie (8 Jul 1964) observed: 'Pauline Julien is a curious mixture of strength and fragility, assurance and insecurity, youth and maturity, knowledge and instinct, waif and woman. This bipolarity makes her at once elusive and extremely engaging. If I had to describe her talent with just one adjective, it would be the word entrancing that I would use.' Among the awards Julien received are two Grand prix du disque de l'Académie Charles-Cros in Paris for Suite québécoise (1970) and Où peut-on vous toucher? (1985), and the 1974 Prix de musique Calixa-Lavallée. In 1994 France decorated her Chevalier des arts et des lettres, and in 1997 she received the Chevalier de l'Order national du Québec. The Montreal Centre des arts de la scène Pauline-Julien, devoted to francophone arts, is named for her.
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