The Great Tenor Tragedy
Auteur: Adolphe Nourrit
Nombre de pages: 179 pages
ISBN: 0931340896, 9780931340895
Edition: Amadeus Press
Date de publication: Amadeus Press
Description: In 1839, four days after his thirty-seventh birthday, a great artist leapt to his death from the roof of an apartment building in Naples. So ended the life of Adolphe Nourrit, reigning tenor of the Paris Opéra for thriteen years, pupil of the elder García, poet, and the singing actor who almost single-handedly created a repertoire for the dramatic tenor. Nourrit was the first Arnold (in Rossini's William Tell), Éléazar (in Halévy's La Juive), and Raoul (in Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots). Liszt, Rossini, and Donizetti were among his friends, and Chopin played the organ at a memorial service in Marseilles. The author recounts Nourrit's appalling personal tragedy, played out against the backdrop of operatic life in early nineteenth-century France and Italy. The events leading up to his suicide are told mostly in letters Nourrit wrote to his wife and friends in the last two years of his life. In 1837 a rival had appeared at the Opéra: Gilbert-Louis Duprez. Asked to share his lofty position and convinced that the new full-voiced singing style was no passing fashion, Nourrit left Paris for Italy to learn a new language and vocal technique. His eloquent letters describe his lessons with Donizetti in Naples, the tortuous path to his successful premiere as an Italian singer, rising doubts about the road he had taken, anxieties about the health of his voice, and finally, blackest despair. The author, who has been haunted by Nourrit's tale for more than two decades, calls this book the "love child" of his long career. A moving, authentic story, it has the power of fiction.