Born Jennie Davidovich around 1900 in Belorussia, Tourel gave several differing accounts of her early years. She settled in Paris where she collaborated with the Venezuelan composer Reynaldo Hahn and became a member of the Opéra-Comique. Her rôles include Mignon, Cherubino and Carmen, which she performed over 200 times. The onset of the War saw Tourel move to New York and become a member of the Metropolitan Opera where she performed in Norma and The Barber of Seville. In America, she took part in the première of Bernstein’s I Hate Music and Jeremiah Symphony and was the soloist in the American première of Prokofiev’s cantata Alexander Nevsky. After her retirement in 1950, she created the rôle of Baba the Turk in Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress at La Fenice, Venice in 1951. Jennie Tourel died in New York in 1973.