Adolphe Nourrit had taken his own life on 8 March by jumping out of his hotel window in Naples. Despite his successful showing in Bellini's Norma in that city, there were criticisms that his voice was not loud enough, which he took very much to heart; and he was in some despair at having been eclipsed by Gilbert Duprez in major roles at the Paris Opéra.

The sad death of Adolphe Nourrit has filled our whole artistic world with grief and shock, and it's the third catastrophe of this kind we have had to mourn in the last few years. But if the deaths of Louis Robert and Antoine Gros were tragic examples of the power imagination can exercise on unbalanced, unworldly minds, the suicide of our celebrated singer has shown also how the noblest and most legitimate pride can prove fatal when it has developed and grown without any outward sign, until the moment when the shield that was protecting it is removed.^# Nourrit embarked on his career without encountering any of the difficulties of initiation which have proved daunting and persistent for so many others. He was to know them, however; but too late, when his soul had lost the moral strength to resist them and to emerge from them sharper and stronger. Sadly, he was well aware of the dangers of his mentality, leading to a struggle the outcome of which could be predicted in advance. An unbalanced person who recognises his lack of balance accentuates it by thinking about it. Once he learns that he's liable to feel fear, he fears the fear, and at the first storm reason deserts him.