Amélie-Julie Candeille (night of 30/31 July 1767, parish of
Saint-Sulpice, Paris â€" 4 February 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 [fr], 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 (1744â€"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). AmÃ(c)lie-Julie Candeille Biography, NetWorth, Height, Age, Weight, Family, Married, Son, Daughter