Jean Nouguès

Jean-Charles Nouguès (25 April 1875 – 28 August 1932) was a French composer of operas.

Born in Bordeaux, Nouguès was from a wealthy family, and in his youth he received little formal musical training. His first opera, Le Roi de Papagey, was written when he was only sixteen; after further study in Paris, he composed a second, Yannha, which was premiered in Bordeaux in 1905. Neither this nor 1904's Thamyris had much success. In 1905, Nouguès gained some notice with his incidental music for a production of Maurice Maeterlinck's play La Mort de Tintagiles at the Théâtre des Mathurins in Paris.

1909 was the year of Nouguès' greatest success, the opera Quo Vadis, with a libretto by Henri Caïn based on the novel by Henryk Sienkiewicz. Quo Vadis premiered in Nice and was soon taken to Paris; from there it went on to London and Milan. Maggie Teyte sang the female lead, and the work was also seen in Chicago and Philadelphia.

Nouguès died in Paris in 1932. Little of his music has been committed to disc; Les Frères Danilo has been rereleased by Marston Records, but otherwise all that is known is a handful of excerpts from Quo Vadis recorded by Armand Crabbé and Mattia Battistini. David Mason Greene also indicates that some selections from L'Aigle were recorded in the early days of recorded sound.