La muette de Portici
While at the Opéra, he became a pupil of Gioachino Rossini with whom he would work frequently. Nourrit created all principal tenor roles in Rossini's French operas, namely 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 other parts. When "La muette de Portici" was performed in Brussels on 25 August 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.