Mel (Mélanie) Bonis
Femmes de légende

About Mel (Mélanie) Bonis's Femmes de légende

Mel Bonis’s Femmes de légende is a captivating piano suite inspired by legendary women from myth, literature, and history. It was assembled in 2003 by Christine Géliot from works composed by Bonis over a period of about fifteen years. Although she did not originally conceive them as a cycle, the portraits form a unified gallery of characters. Phœbé, Mélisande, Desdémona, and Ophélie appear as fragile, dreamlike women marked by melancholy, silence, and victimhood. In contrast, Viviane, Salomé, and Omphale embody charm, vitality, seduction, and dramatic feminine power. One senses that Bonis probably projected herself onto these female figures, depicting them with a very personal poetry. Ophélie remained unpublished during Bonis’s lifetime and first appeared in 1998. Orchestral versions exist of Salomé and Ophélie.