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It was about midnight, and the composer, seating himself at the piano with the words before him, in a fever of inspiration threw out the splendid duo between Raoul and Valentine which closes the act, and which always equally enchants performers and audience; and when this music was performed at the next rehearsal, the orchestra, players, and vocalists carried the composer in triumph on the stage to receive their spontaneous plaudits and congratulations, while Nourrit embraced him with tears of delight.
It was in an opera composed expressly for him "Polyceucte." He threw himself from a height of sixty feet. His voice did not please that particular public. Nourrit was too much accustomed to sing Glueck and Mozart. The Neapolitans said of him: "Vecchico canto." BARON DUPIN. Poor Nourrit! why did he not wait! Duprez has lost his voice.
Nourrit, who was subject to alternate fits of excitement and depression, was maddened to such a degree by a series of articles praising Duprez at his expense, that his friends feared for his sanity, a dread which was ominously realized in Italy two years afterward, where Nourrit was then singing.
Nourrit was the intimate friend of many of the most distinguished men of the age in music, literature, and art, and his sad death caused sincere national grief. As a singer and actor, Nourrit had one of the most creative and originating minds of his age. He himself never visited the United States, but his younger brother, Auguste, was a favorite tenor in New York thirty years ago.
The son of a tenor singer, who united the business of a diamond broker with the profession of music, young Nourrit received a good classical education, and was then placed in the Conservatoire, where he received a most thorough training in the science of music, as well as in the art of singing.
COUNT DE MONTALEMBERT. And Naples! BARON THENARD. I prefer Naples. M. FULCHIRON. Yes, Naples, that's the place. By the by, I was there when poor Nourrit killed himself. I was staying in the house next to his. BARON CHARLES DUPIN. He took his life? It was not an accident? M. FULCHIRON. Oh! it was a case of suicide, sure enough. He had been hissed the previous day. He could not stand that.
"In the situation in which you have placed yourself, and which resembles that of Duprez, who, on his first appearance at Paris, went to singing with all the voice his lungs would yield, instead of imitating Nourrit, who gave the audience just enough to enchant them, the following, I think, is your proper course to "
At the Hotel de France, where Madame d'Agoult had persuaded me to take quarters near her, the conditions of existence were charming for a few days. She received many litterateurs, artists, and some clever men of fashion. It was at Madame d'Agoult's, or through her, that I made the acquaintance of Eugene Sue, Baron d'Eckstein, Chopin, Mickiewicz, Nourrit, Victor Schoelcher, &c.
Est ce qu'on a changé le dénouement?" Luckily, Nourrit was unhurt, the curtain was raised again, the singers made their conventional acknowledgments, and the names of the authors were announced amid the wildest enthusiasm. After that night Meyerbeer had to pay no more money to get his operas on the stage.
"Adolphe Nourrit with his thread of a voice," remarked the notary with patronizing indulgence, "was scarcely worthy to accompany the nightingale of Soulanges." This provincial bourgeoisie, so comfortably satisfied with itself, took the lead through the various superiorities of its members.
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