ABSTRACT
As part of the 'industry' of musical Paris the salons offered frequent employment, especially to singers, as reflected in those journals which reported on the musical life of the capital and, sometimes, of the provinces. The influence on French music by that of Italy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is well known and well documented. French opera singers had prided themselves on their clarity of diction and dramatic flair. One of the first to fuse French and Italian singing styles, and hailed as such by Fetis and many others, was Pierre Garat (1762-1823). Manuel Garcia (1775-1832) was bom in Spain where he made his name as a popular actor and a singer especially in Madrid. Like Maria Malibran, Adolphe Nourrit (1802-1839) became a legend, not least because his exceptional career, like hers, was cut short by tragic circumstances, although in his case he lived nine years longer than did 'La Malibran'.
