Adolphe Nourrit
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Adolphe Nourrit (3 March 1802 – 8 March 1839) was a French operatic
Early life
Nourrit was born on 3 March 1802 and raised in Montpellier, Hérault. His father, Louis Nourrit, was a well-known operatic tenor and diamond merchant. Louis' example deeply influenced Adolphe (and Adolphe's brother Auguste, who would also become a tenor). Adolphe studied singing and musical theory with his father and then, despite his father's objections, took lessons with Manuel del Pópulo Vicente García. He began his performing career shortly after finishing his studies with García, which lasted for 18 months.
Career
Not yet 20 years of age, Adolphe Nourrit made his professional operatic debut in 1821 as Pylades in Gluck's
While at the Opéra, he became a pupil of
Nourrit was an intelligent and cultured singer. He possessed a mellow and powerful vocal
As Nourrit's status at the Opéra increased, so did his influence upon new productions. Composers often sought, and usually accepted, his advice. For example, when it came to La Juive, he wrote the words of Eléazar's aria "Rachel, quand du Seigneur"; and he also insisted that Meyerbeer rework the love-duet climax of Act 4 of Les Huguenots until it met with his approval.
While at the Opéra, 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
Beside singing and teaching, Nourrit composed and wrote scenarios for ballets at the
Nourrit's fame faded in the late 1830s, however, as new singers gained the favour of the Parisian public. In October 1836, impresario
Throughout this vexed period in his life, Nourrit enjoyed success as a recitalist. He was the first to introduce
While listening to Duprez at the Opéra on 22 November 1837, he decided to go to Italy in the hope of mastering the Italian manner of singing in order to succeed the great Italian virtuoso tenor Giovanni Battista Rubini when Rubini retired from the stage. He duly left Paris in December of that year. The following March, he began studies in Naples with the composer Gaetano Donizetti, who was a friend of Duprez's.[2]
He also asked Donizetti to provide an opera for his début in Naples. Donizetti complied but the new work, Poliuto, was banned from performance on the secular stage by the authorities because of its Christian subject matter, and Nourrit felt betrayed. Meanwhile, he had been working hard to eradicate excessive nasal resonance from his tone production, only to lose his head voice as a result. His wife, arriving in Italy in July 1838, was shocked by what she considered to be the impaired sound of his singing and by the fragile state of his physique; he was being leeched regularly and was constantly hoarse. Nonetheless, his delayed Neapolitan début, which took place in Saverio Mercadante's Il giuramento on 14 November 1838, proved to be a success.
Death
As Nourrit's liver disease worsened, so did his mental state, and his memory began to fail as well. On 7 March 1839 he sang at a benefit concert but was disappointed by the quality of his performance and the audience's reaction to it. The following morning, he jumped to his death from the Hotel Barbaia. His body was returned to Paris for burial; at Marseilles, while the body was in transit to Paris, Frédéric Chopin played an organ transcription of Schubert's lied Die Sterne at a memorial service.[3][4][5] George Sand gives a description of Chopin's playing at Nourrit's Marseilles memorial service in a letter of 28 April 1839:
Chopin sacrificed himself by playing the organ at the Elevation – and what an organ! Anyhow our boy made the best of it by using the less discordant stops, and he played Schubert's Die Sterne, not with a passionate and glowing tone that Nourrit used, but with a plaintive sound as soft as an echo from another world. Two or three at most among those present felt its meaning and had tears in their eyes.[6]
Nourrit is buried in Montmartre Cemetery with his wife, who survived him by only a few months, dying shortly after the birth of their youngest son.
See also
References
Notes
- ^ "Iphigénie en Tauride - Mlle Leroux, Nourrit fils", Le Miroir, 211, 12 September 1821, p. 2 (accessible for free online at Gallica - BnF).
- ^ Nourrit to his wife, in Robert Potterson, "The Letters of Adolfe Nourrit on Donizetti", Newsletter 7, April 1975, pp. 5–6. Donizetti Society (London)
- ^ Krzysztof Rottermund: Chopin and Hesse: New Facts About Their Artistic Acquaintance trans. in The American Organist, March 2008
- Majorca with George Sand, during which his precarious health deteriorated due to constant rain and damp.
- ^ "George Sand, Frederic Chopin et l'orgue de ND du Mont". 15 March 2011. Retrieved 21 April 2023.
- ^ Chopin 1962, p. 177, letter from George Sand to Carlotta Marliani, Marseilles, 28 April 1839.
Sources
- Chopin, Fryderyk (1962). Selected Correspondence of Fryderyk Chopin. Translated by Hedley, Arthur. Compiled by Bronisław Edward Sydow. London: Heinemann.
- ISBN 0-333-34854-0.
- Walker, Evan (1992). "Nourrit, Adolphe" in ISBN 1-56159-228-5.
Further reading
- Nourrit, Adolphe (1995). ISBN 978-0-931340-89-5.