Mel Bonis

French composer Mel Bonis (1858-1937). The musical alias of the woman known as Mélanie Domange. Due to her unusual gifts, Cesar Franck recommended her for acceptance to the venerable Paris Conservatoire de Musique. For the next five years she studied harmony, piano accompaniment and composition and received first prize in harmony. For all her accomplishments, Bonis met with resistance both from the establishment, which looked down upon women composers, and her parents, who opposed her pursuing music as a career.
Despire frequent bouts of depression, Bonis was a prolific composer in many forms. Her musical aesthetic reflected the times in which she lived, progressing from a Franckian-inspired late Romanticism to Impressionism and even Neo-Classicism.