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Early life and education
Nourrit was born and raised in Montpellier, France. His father, Louis Nourrit was a well known operatic tenor and a great inspiration within both Adolphe's life and his other son Auguste Nourrit's life, both of whom would have successful careers as operatic tenors. Nourrit studied music with his father and then, initially against his father's wishes, eighteen months with Manuel del Pópulo Vicente García. He began his performing career shortly after finishing his studies with García.
Career
Nourrit made his professional opera debut in 1821 as Pylades in Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride. In 1826 he succeeded his father as the principal tenor at the Théâtre de l'Académie Royale de Musique, a position he held until 1836. While at the Théâtre de l'Académie Royale de Musique, he became a pupil of Rossini with whom he would work with frequently. Nourrit created numerous roles in Rossini's operas including Néocles in Le siège de Corinthe (1826), Aménophis in the revised version of Moïse et Pharaon (1827), the title role in Le comte Ory (1828), and Arnold in William Tell (1829). He was also the first to perform the roles of Masaniello in Auber's La muette de Portici (1828), Robert in Meyerbeer's Robert le Diable, Eleazar in Halévy's La Juive(1835), and Raoul in Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots (1836) among others. Interestingly, when La muette de Portici was performed in Brussels on August 25, 1830, the duet "Amour sacré de la patrie", with Nourrit in the tenor role, was the key to the "opera riot" that sparked the Belgian Revolution.
Nourrit had a mellow, powerful voice that extended up to E5, although he never performed higher than D5 in public. He sang during a turning-point in operatic singing when singers began using more open-voiced, italianate production. The scores written for Nourrit by Rossini, Meyerbeer and others included orchestration where the dynamics and the thickness below the voice part indicated that he could not have been singing in falsetto in his upper register, which was a departure from the practice of earlier opera composers. As Nourrit’s status at the Opéra increased, so did his influence upon new productions. His advice and collaboration was sought by composers; he wrote the words of Eléazar’s aria Rachel, quand du Seigneur and insisted that Meyerbeer rework the love-duet climax of Act 4 of Les Huguenots until it met with his approval.
While at the Théâtre de l'Académie Royale de Musique, Nourrit received consistent positive reviews for his performances and his popularity led to his appointment as the professeur de déclamation pour la tragédie lyrique at the Conservatoire de Paris in 1827. He had many successful students including dramatic soprano Cornélie Falcon. In addition, he was concerned more broadly with the social aspects of singing, particularly with the missionary role of the performer. In the early 1830s he was involved with the ideas of the Saint-Simonianism, and after his retirement dreamed of founding a grand opéra populaire which would introduce opera to the masses.
Beside singing and teaching, Nourrit composed and wrote scenarios for ballets at the Opéra de Paris including the libretto for La Sylphide (1832) which was based on Meyerbeer's Robert le Diable.
Nourrit's fame faded in the late 1830s as new singers gained the favour of the Parisian public. In October 1836, Charles Duponchel engaged Gilbert Duprez as joint first tenor at the Opéra de Paris. Nourrit accepted this arrangement in case he should fall ill. He sang Guillaume Tell superbly with Duprez in the audience on 5 October. On 10 October, during the aria La muette de Portici, with Duprez again in the house, Nourrit suddenly went hoarse. After the performance Berlioz and George Osborne walked the tenor up and down the boulevards as he despaired and talked of suicide; on 14 October he resigned from the Opéra. During this time he continued to enjoy success as a salon performer; he was the first to introduce Schubert’s lieder to Parisian audiences at the celebrated soirées organized by Liszt, Urhan and Alexandre Batta at the salons d’Erard in 1837. The intimacy of the salon apparently suited him particularly well; criticized for a weakening voice, he showed great nuance of feeling and dramatic range. His farewell performance from the Opéra was on 1 April 1837. He immediately set out to perform in the provinces, but a liver condition (possibly the result of alcoholism) and its effects on his singing forced him to cut short his tours. While listening to Duprez at the Opéra, on 22 November 1837, he decided to go to Italy in the hope of succeeding Rubini on his retirement, and left Paris in December 1837.
The following March he began to study in Naples with Donizetti. He worked to eradicate nasal resonance, but as a result lost his head voice. He wanted Donizetti to write the opera for his Naples début, Poliuto; when it was forbidden because of its Christian subject matter, Nourrit felt betrayed. His wife, arriving in July 1838, was shocked at the sound of his voice and his thinness; he was being leeched regularly and was constantly hoarse. But his Naples début in Mercadante’s Il giuramento (14 November 1838) was a success. As his liver disease advanced, his mental health deteriorated and his memory began to fail. On 7 March 1839 he sang at a benefit concert, was disappointed in his performance and upset by the favourable reaction of the audience. The following morning, he jumped to his death from the Hotel Barbaia. At his funeral Fryderyk Chopin played an organ transcription of Schubert's Lied Die Gestirne.1
References
- ^ Krzysztof Rottermund: Chopin and Hesse: New Facts About Their Artistic Aquaintance trans. in The American Organist, March 2008
Sources
- Evan Walker/Sarah Hibberd. The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, edited by Stanley Sadie (1992). ISBN 0-333-73432-7 and ISBN 1-56159-228-5
