Duprez, Gilbert (-Louis) (1806 - 1896)

French tenor, Composer, dramatist and music theorist

Duprez, portrait, 1837

Duprez began his operatic career in Paris in 1825 without much fanfare. his first successes in Italy in contralto tenor roles in operas by Rossini and Bellini.

In 1831, at the first Italian performance of Guillaume Tell at Lucca's Teatro del Giglio, he made lyric art history when, for the first time in an opera house, he sang a counter-cut (^C4), not in falsettone (head voice), but in full voice or, as we say, "di petto" (chest voice).

He imported this new technique to France when he made his debut at the Paris Opera in 1837, becoming one of its leading members until his retirement in 1849. Rumor has it that his successes aggravated the melancholy of his predecessor and unhappy rival, Adolphe Nourrit, who committed suicide in 1839. Yet Duprez sang at Nourrit's funeral mass in Cherubini's Requiem.

After teaching at the Paris Conservatoire from 1842 to 1850, he founded his own singing school in 1853. He wrote several didactic and popular works, including L'Art du chant (1845), Souvenirs d'un chanteur (1880) and Récréations de mon grand âge (1888), and also composed six operas.

Discover the artist's world through various documents: each image opens the door to one of his interpretations, his portraits in civilian clothes, his autographs or press articles about him from the period