Mélanie Bonis composed mostly in the last decades of her long life. Born in Paris and introduced very early to César Franck and then taught by him, Ernest Guiraud and Ambroise Thomas at the Conservatoire, she was soon forced by her family to quit a musical career and marry a businessman twice her age. Her tragic story would merit a novel, but despite her bourgeois environment, with the encouragement of a lover who spurred her to continue her compositions, Mel Bonis (this is her nom de plume) wrote almost three hundred works, mostly piano pieces.
Mauro Piccinini