Julie Candeille
| Julie Candeille | |
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Portrait by A. Labille-Guiard (1791)
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| Born | July 31, 1767 Saint-Sulpice, Paris |
| Died | February 4, 1834 Paris |
| Nationality | French |
| Occupation | Musician, singer, actor, playwright |
Amélie-Julie Candeille (night of July 31, 1767, parish of Saint-Sulpice, Paris – February 4, 1834, Paris) was a French composer, librettist, writer, singer, actress, comedian, and instrumentalist.
Julie Candeille described herself in her Mémoires as having "bright blonde hair, brown eyes, white, fine and clear skin, [and] a soft and laughing air". According to her colleague the actress Louise Fusil, Candeille was pretty, with "a well-taken size, a noble gait, [and] traits and whiteness as held by creole women". Her ancestry was actually Flemish, with no known Creole elements,
Candeille, like many women musicians of her time, came from a musical family. Her father Pierre-Joseph Candeille (1744–1827) was a composer, actor and low-bass opera-singer in the chorus, though he ended up exiled in Moulins where he became a theatre director. Her father was her primary teacher, and some have speculated that his deeply invested interest in his daughter's education was an effort to bolster his career. Candeille developed her natural talents for song and harpsichord and performed extensively while still a child in chamber orchestras. Aged 7 she played in a concert before the French king and she was said to have played a concert alongside the teenage Mozart. By the age of 13 she had performed in public as a singer, pianist and harpist. Aged 14, she was initiated into the "La Candeur" masonic lodge, in which she met several playwrights such as Olympe de Gouges and other influential figures who favoured her artistic career in Parisian society and the intrigues of the dying ancien régime. In her Mémoires, she records how she benefitted from protection by powerful figures such as the marquis de Louvois (an anti-establishment aristocrat and intimate friend of the chevalier de Champcenetz who was, like him, sent to the fort de Ham for misconduct), the music-loving duchesse de Villeroy (who led a mainly female salon whose influence also extended into the theatre), and the baron de Breteuil (minister of the king's household and possibly a lover of Candeille).
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