Nabokov, Nicolas [Nikolay]

Nourrit, Adolphe

(b Montpellier, 3 March 1802; d Naples, 8 March 1839). French tenor, son of Louis Nourrit. He studied with the elder García for 18 months, initially against his father’s wishes, then made his début at the Opéra in 1821 as Pylades in Iphigénie en Tauride. He was coached intensively by Rossini and created the roles of Néocles in Le siège de Corinthe, Count Ory, Aménophis in Moïse et Pharaon and Arnold in Guillaume Tell. Among the other roles he created were Masaniello (La muette de Portici; seeillustration), Robert (Robert le diable), Eléazar (La Juive) and Raoul (Les Huguenots). From December 1826, when he succeeded his father as first tenor at the Opéra, until his resignation in October 1836, he created the principal tenor roles in all major new productions, generating an entire repertory for the acting tenor. His success in Moïse and Le siège de Corinthe was so great that in 1827 he was appointed professeur de déclamation pour la tragédie lyrique at the Conservatoire, where his most famous student was the dramatic soprano Cornélie Falcon.

Moïse marked a turning-point in singing at the Opéra, as the singers turned to the more open-voiced, italianate production favoured by Rossini. Here, as in all the scores written for Nourrit, the dynamics and the thickness of the orchestration below his voice part indicate that he could not have been singing in falsetto in his upper register (as has often been stated). He had a mellow, powerful voice that extended to e''; d'' was the highest he ever sang in public. 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. He also wrote four ballet scenarios including La Sylphide (1832), whose combination of magic and Scottian realism was inspired by Robert le diable. 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-Simonians, and after his retirement dreamed of founding a grand opéra populaire which would introduce opera to the masses (see Locke).

About 1 October 1836, Charles Duponchel engaged Gilbert Duprez as joint first tenor at the Opéra. Nourrit accepted this arrangement in case he should fall ill (among other reasons). He sang Guillaume Tell superbly with Duprez in the audience on 5 October. On 10 October, during 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 weak 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.

Nourrit’s brother, the tenor Auguste Nourrit (1808–53), was for some time theatre director at The Hague, Amsterdam and Brussels, and took over his post at the Conservatoire after his death.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L.M. Quichérat: Adolphe Nourrit: sa vie (Paris, 1867)

E. Legouvé: Soixante ans de souvenirs (Paris, 1887); chap.9, ‘Adolphe Nourrit’, repr. in Le ménestrel (27 March, 3 and 10 April 1887)

B. de Monvel: Adolphe Nourrit (Paris, 1903)

R. Locke: Music, Musicians, and the Saint-Simonians (Chicago, 1986), esp.97–101

E.P. Walker: Adolphe Nourrit (diss., Peabody Institute, John Hopkins U., 1989)

H. Pleasants: The Great Tenor Tragedy (Portland, OR, 1995) [edited and annotated writings of Nourrit]

M. Beghelli: ‘Il “Do di petto”: dissacrazione di un mito’, Il saggiatore musicale, iii (1996), 105–49

EVAN WALKER/SARAH HIBBERD

Nourrit, Auguste.

French musician, brother of Adolphe Nourrit.

Nourrit, Louis

(b Montpellier, 4 Aug 1780; d Brunoy, 23 Sept 1831). French tenor, father of Adolphe Nourrit. He entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1802 and began to study with Pierre Garat in the following year. In 1804 he was listed as a member of the Imperial chapel with other members of the Opéra company. He made his Opéra début on 3 March 1805 as Renaud in Gluck’s Armide, and later appeared with success as Orpheus. Fétis considered that his engagement marked the beginning of a revival in French singing, his predecessors having been more concerned with generating dramatic excitement than with purity of line. He was a reticent actor at first but later gained assurance, and in 1812 he replaced Etienne Lainez as the Opéra’s principal tenor. He sang in the premières of Cherubini’s Les abencérages (1813) and Spontini’s Olimpie (1819), and in 1824 sang with his son Adolphe in Daussoigne’s opéra féerie Les deux Salem; their similarity of appearance and voice apparently inspired the work’s central theme, but did not guarantee its success, and the opera was dropped from the repertory after 13 performances. In 1826 father and son again appeared together in the première of Rossini’s Le siège de Corinthe (9 October). Although his voice was still in good condition, Louis retired two months later, leaving his son to take over the more florid and demanding new tenor repertory. He lacked ambition as a performer, and throughout his career at the Opéra he also worked as a diamond merchant.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

E. Legouvé: Soixante ans de souvenirs (Paris, 1887)

J. Mongrédien: La musique en France des Lumières au Romantisme (Paris, 1986; Eng. trans., 1996), 165

S. Piton: The Paris Opéra: Growth and Grandeur, 1815–1914 (New York, 1990)

PHILIP ROBINSON/SARAH HIBBERD