Mel (Mélanie Hélène) Bonis was born in Paris in 1858 and showed remarkable musical gifts from childhood, entering the Paris Conservatoire at sixteen to study alongside Debussy and Gabriel Pierné under César Franck. A promising relationship with the singer Amédée-Louis Hettich was cut short by her parents, who instead arranged her marriage to the industrialist Édouard Domange, already twice widowed and father to five children. For years Bonis devoted herself to domestic life, until a chance reunion with Hettich in the 1890s rekindled her passion for composition. Over the following decades she produced more than 300 works, ranging from solo piano pieces and chamber music to over forty songs for voice and piano. Despite this prolific output, her natural modesty and the gender prejudices of her time saw her music fall into neglect after the First World War. This album presents her orchestral works, written between 1891 and 1912, offering a vivid showcase of a compositional voice only now receiving its deserved recognition.