While principally active in live performance on the stage and radio, she starred as Chichita in the 1935 musical film Tango Bar for Paramount Pictures.

[3] Initially trained as a singer in Paris by Berton, she later studied singing with Estelle Liebling, the voice teacher of Beverly Sills, in New York City.

[8] After that production closed on 20 June 1928, she performed the role of Trini in the national tour of Dave Stamper's musical Take the Air which began in August 1928.

[12] In 1931, she portrayed the title role in Bizet's Carmen at the Crescent Theatre in Trenton, New Jersey, for her first foray into opera in the United States.

[15] That same year she gave a recital at the New York Biltmore Hotel which featured songs by Robert Schumann and Manuel de Falla.

[16] She toured the United States as Carmen with the Cosmopolitan Grand Opera Company in 1932, earning rave reviews in The Washington Post when the troupe performed at the National Theatre in January of that year: Colette D'Arville was a gay, bewitching, whimsical coquette in Bizet's opera Carmen last night when an appreciative audience enjoyed her wiles and witcheries and realistic portrayal of the cigarette girl of Old Seville ... Mlle.

[17]In 1935, D'Arville starred opposite Carlos Gardel in the musical film Tango Bar as Chichita which was directed by John Reinhardt for Paramount Pictures.

[18] That same year she was a member of WOR's Light Opera Troupe which performed operettas and musical theatre material on the radio.

[22] In 1939 she was a featured performer in a concert hosted by composer Deems Taylor at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel entitled "A Spring in Old Vienna".

[1] Taylor traveled with D'Arville to the Basque Country in 1936, and in a private letter to his ex-wife Mary Kennedy from March 1936 he wrote about his intention to propose marriage to her.

[2] She portrayed the title role in Massenet's Le jongleur de Notre-Dame with the Newark Civic Grand Opera in April 1942.