French Chamber Music Mystique

Chamber music was hard to sell in 19th century Paris which was totally absorbed by opera, but a few composers took a stand and stood out. Two of them were women, Louise Farrenc, the first female professor at the Paris Conservatory, and Mélanie Bonis, who disguised her gender by using the first name of Mel on her publications to sound like a man. Mel’s story will break your heart, but her music will melt it, and this all-French program as a whole will bring you into the intimate confines of the secret French chamber music societies that worked so hard to develop a rich genre in the shadows of the period’s over-blown operatic fixation.