Adolphe Nourrit

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Adolphe Nourrit (March 3, 1802–March 7, 1839) was a French tenor.

A native of Montpellier, Nourrit was one of the most respected opera singers in the 1820s and 1830s. He was the first to perform the roles of Masaniello in Auber's La muette de Portici, Eleazar in Halévy's La Juive, Raoul in Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots, and Robert in his Robert le Diable. Rossini composed the title-role in Le comte Ory and the roles of Neocles in Le siège de Corinthe and Arnold in William Tell for him.

Beside singing, Nourrit composed and wrote scenarios for ballets at the Opéra de Paris.

When La muette de Portici was performed in Brussels on August 25, 1830, the duet "Amour sacré de la patrie", with Adolphe Nourrit in the tenor role, was the key to the "opera riot" that sparked the Belgian Revolution.

Nourrit's fame faded in the late 1830s as new singers gained the favour of the Parisian public. He left France, and installed himself in Naples. Overwhelmed by melancholy he committed suicide by jumping out of a window. At his funeral Fryderyk Chopin played an organ transcription of Schubert's Lied Die Gestirne.^[1]