page_title: Adolphe Nourrit
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Adolphe Nourrit / Career
caption_attribution_description: Costume designs for the première of Rossini's William Tell. Laure Cinti-Damoreau as Mathilde Adolphe Nourrit as Arnold Melchtal, and Nicolas Levasseur as Walter Furst. The images quite obviously originally were meant to fit together.&#91;1&#93; The shadows stretch from one image to the other, and even the watercolour splotches and other minor elements of the painting match up perfectly. I presume it was cut up in order to send it to the various tailors who made the costumes, but it makes more sense as art put back together. Compare File:Rossini - Le comte Ory - Eugène Du Faget - Paris 1828 - 2. Le gouverneur, Levasseur, le comte Ory, Nourrit, Ragonde, Gosselin.jpg or File:Costumes - Frederic Lemaitre as Buridan, Mlle George as Marguerite de Bourgogne (La Tour de Nesle, September 1832).jpg
context_page_description: Adolphe Nourrit was a French operatic tenor, librettist, and composer. One of the most esteemed opera singers of the 1820s and 1830s, he was particularly associated with the works of Gioachino Rossini and Giacomo Meyerbeer.
context_section_description: Not yet 20 years of age, Adolphe Nourrit made his professional operatic debut in 1821 as Pylades in Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride. In 1826, he succeeded his father as the principal tenor at the Paris Opéra, a position he held until 1836.
  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.
  Nourrit was an intelligent and cultured singer. He possessed a mellow and powerful vocal timbre during his prime and was a master of the head voice. His range extended up to E5, although he never went higher than D5 in public. He sang during a turning-point in French operatic vocalism, when performers began using a rounder, more open-throated and Italianate method of voice production than hitherto had been the case, with less resort to falsetto by tenors. Indeed, the scores of the musical passages written for Nourrit by Rossini, Giacomo Meyerbeer and others, contain orchestral markings which indicate that he could not have been singing in falsetto in his upper register. This was a departure from the practice of earlier male operatic interpreters.
  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 Conservatoire de Paris in 1827. He had many successful students, including the 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 embraced the ideas of Saint-Simonianism and dreamed of founding a grand opéra populaire which would introduce operatic works 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, however, as new singers gained the favour of the Parisian public. In October 1836, impresario Duponchel engaged Gilbert Duprez, who commanded an exciting high C from the chest, as joint "First Tenor" with Nourrit at the Opéra de Paris. Nourrit accepted this arrangement as a hedge against his falling ill. He sang his Guillaume Tell part exceptionally well with Duprez in the audience on 5 October 1836 but five days later, during La muette de Portici, with Duprez again in the house, he suddenly went hoarse. After the performance, Hector Berlioz and George Osborne walked Nourrit up and down the streets as he despaired aloud and talked of suicide. On 14 October, he resigned from the Opéra.
  Throughout this vexed period in his life, Nourrit enjoyed success as a recitalist. He was the first to introduce Franz Schubert's lieder to Parisian audiences at the celebrated soirées organized by Franz Liszt, Chrétien Urhan and Alexandre Batta at the Salons d’Erard in 1837. The intimacy of the salon apparently suited him well and although criticized for a weakening voice, his singing displaye
caption: Costume designs by Eugène Du Faget for the original production of William Tell: Adolphe Nourrit in the middle, with Laure Cinti-Damoreau left and Nicolas Levasseur right.
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