At last he persuaded
himself that the applause he won from a Neapolitan audience was purely
ironical, was but scoffing ill-disguised. At five in the morning, on
the 8th of March, 1839, he flung himself from the window of an upper
floor, and was picked up in the street quite dead. Poor Nourrit! he
was a man of genius in his way; but for him there would have been no
grand duet in the fourth act of "Les Huguenots," no cavatina for
Eleazar in "La Juive;" and to his inventiveness is to be ascribed the
ballet of "La Sylphide," which Taglioni made so famous.
It is odd to hear of an actor anxious for "goose," and disappointed at
not obtaining it. Yet something like this happened once during the
O.P. riots. Making sure that there would be a disturbance in the
theatre, Mr. Murray, one of John Kemble's company, thought it needless
to commit his part to memory; he was so certain that he should not be
listened to. But the uproar suddenly ceased; there was a lull in the
storm. The actor bowed, stammered, stared, and was what is called in
the language of the theatre "dead stuck.
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