His debut at the Palais Garnier took place in 1942, in Henri Rabaud's Mârouf, savetier du Caire.
[1] Bourdin seldom performed outside France, but did a few guest appearances at the Royal Opera House in London (including Pelléas to the Mélisande of Maggie Teyte in 1930),[1] La Scala in Milan, and the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires.
He also sang in the first performance of surviving fragments of Chabrier's Vaucochard et fils Ier on 22 April 1941 at the Salle du Conservatoire with Germaine Cernay, conducted by Roger Désormière.
His most memorable roles were: Clavaroche in André Messager's Fortunio, Metternich in Arthur Honegger and Jacques Ibert's L'Aiglon, Duparquet in Reynaldo Hahn's Ciboulette, Lheureux in Emmanuel Bondeville's Madame Bovary, the lead in Darius Milhaud's Bolivar, but also standard roles such as Valentin, Athanael, Onegin, and Sharpless.
He can be heard in two complete recordings, Faust and Thais, opposite his wife, the soprano Géori Boué, as well as in Werther, and Ravel's L'heure espagnole.