Paul Bourillon was one of the world’s top sprinters in the 1890s, winning the 1896 World Sprint Championship. He was also French champion in 1897 and 1899 and won the Grand Prix de Paris in 1898 and the Grand Prix de Genève in 1896. He also had multiple other podium finishes at those events. Bourillon later became an opera singer, making his operatic début in 1902. A gifted singer, Bourillon became a tenor at the Grand-Théâtre in Nantes, then was first tenor at the Bordeaux Opera in 1904, then in Rouen in 1905. He was later hired by the new opera house in Boston, Massachusetts in 1909. At only 36-years-old, in 1913, Bourillon published Mes Souvenirs, his autobiography.
France