Marguerite Olagnier

Marguerite Olagnier, née Joly, was a French composer of the late nineteenth century who also wrote novels and poetry and worked as a singer. Her musical life began at the Théâtre des Variétés in Paris, which she left to travel to Egypt with her husband, Eugène Olagnier.

During her time abroad she probably composed the four-act exotic opera Le Saïs, for which she wrote both the libretto and the music. The work was premiered at the Théâtre de la Renaissance in Paris on 18 December 1881. She later ran her own company, the Théâtre de l'Oratorio, which staged weekly performances of oratorios from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. She also left two operas, Le Persan and Lilipa, which were never performed, an unpublished novel and several songs.

Le Saïs blends features of operetta and French grand opera, with brief, strophic numbers alongside longer and more complex forms. Its hashish scene relies on psalm-like vocal lines, repetitive rhythms and drones to evoke the Orient. Contemporary critics considered the work excessively erotic, a judgement that, in part, still holds.