Mel Bonis (1858-1937) was a great musical talent and a sensitive soul, the child of a socially aspiring family who forbid their daughter to marry the love of her life. Forced into a utilitarian marriage with a respectable husband, she later had an affair with her first sweetheart after all — the stuff of a sentimental novel. Yet she was no fictional character, but rather one of France’s most prolific late-Romantic composers. Celebrated for her piano works, chamber music, and art song, Bonis also enriched the repertoire of impressionism with numerous original gems and arrangements for orchestra. Her particularly modern symphonic poem Ophélie, her Spanish waltz Les Gitanos, and her dances for orchestra are just some of the enchanting discoveries recorded here by the WDR Symphony Orchestra conducted by Joseph Bastian. Soprano Lydia Teuscher sings Le chat sur le toit, a purring melody of an enamored tomcat on a roof at night; mezzo-soprano is the soloist for Noël de la Vierge Marie; and the women of the WDR Radio Chorus join the orchestra for Le Ruisseau.