Amélie-Julie
CANDEILLE
Dr
David C F Wright
The date of birth of
Amélie-Julie Candeille presents
a problem . She was born at midnight
and so the date is either 30 July or
31 July. The year is not in question.
It was 1767.
She was born in Paris.
Her father, Pierre-Joseph Candeille
(1744-1827) was an actor, opera singer
and composer. He was employed at the
Paris Opera as a basse-taille at the
time of Julie's birth but he had an
altercation with the director and moved
to Bourbonnais in search of work. Here
he taught music and became the director
of concerts at Moulins. Her mother kept
house.
The young girl first
performed in public when she was five
years old as a singer with her father.
A year later she began serious music
studies with a local priest in Meaux
and studied Gregorian chant. Her father
taught her the harpsichord.
But there were problems.
Her father was in debt and to avoid
the expected problems they moved back
to Paris under cover of darkness where
he took up work as a singer in the Paris
opera. The salary was not sufficient
to support the family. Julie worked
hard at her music and studied singing
with Joseph Legros ( 1736-1793). She
was simply brilliant and at the age
of seven she played a concerto for Louis
XVI. At the age of nine she played the
arrangement of the Overture: Iphigénia
and Aulide by Gluck such arrangement
being made by Johann Friedrich Edelmann
(1749-1794) and this performance was
given in the presence of the Queen,
Charlotte-Jeanne Beraud de la Haie de
Riou, Marquise de Montesson and wife
of the Duc d’Orléans and Sophie
Arnould a singer at the Paris Opera.
Gluck was so delighted that he picked
her up and raised her up above his head
and then embraced her. This also led
to her giving concerts at the residence
of the Marquisse Montesson.
By the age of twelve
she had composed a quantity of music
which was received favourably. Around
the same age on 27 January 1779 she
sang the role of Diane in L'Amour
Encháiné par Diane.
The composer was Chevalier Lenoir-Duplessis.
It was described as a melodrama, a pantomime
and as an heroic ballet in one act.
This confirmed to Julie’s
father that she should have a career
in opera. He composed an opera Thémire
in 1781 for her to sing and tried to
persuade the Marquis de Luvois to stage
it but he fell in love with Julie although
she was only 14. The father caught the
Marquis trying to seduce her. Candeille
found another patron who was a minister
to the king, one Louis- Auguste le Tonnelier
and tried for the opera to be staged
and for her to enter the opera and the
Comédie Française. She
joined the Paris Opera in 1781. She
was understudy to Antoinette-Cécile
Clavel St Huberty for the role of Thésée
but St Huberty refused to fulfil
her contract. However, it seems that
another soprano took St Huberty’s place,
not Julie. Her debut was in the title
role of Iphigénia by Gluck
on 27 December 1782 and then as Sangarède
in Atys, Piccini’s new opera.
Her father received a pension after
the introduction of this amazing talent
and Julie's salary was 1800 livres by
1782 when she became a full member of
the Opéra.
She was described as
charming, tall with a pleasant voice,
sweet and expressive but restricted,
who should avoid unnecessary gestures,
but having an intelligent acting ability.
Others said that her performance in
the Piccini lacked confidence.
This hit her hard.
Her voice lacked strength and so she
left the Paris opera and went to François-René
Molé (1734 – 1802) suffering
from timidity and fear of failure although
her debut had been a success.
On 15 August 1783 she
played a piano concerto by Clementi
and on 8 December played a piano concerto
by Johann Schobert (1735-1767). On 20
May 1784 she performed her own Piano
Concerto dedicated to Mlle de Matignon
and repeated it on 1 November 1785.
On 2 February 1786 she played the piano
part in her father's Sinfonia Concertante
for piano, clarinet, bassoon, horn and
orchestra and sang a song that her father
had written for her entitled Le bonheur
du juste. Her own piano concerto
was played again on 8 December 1789
and the distinguished horn player, Jean
Lebrun and the celebrated flautist François
Devienee played in the orchestra. She
was applauded with great enthusiasm
on all occasions and surrounded by compliments.
Her father was no longer
employed by the opera from 1784 and
his pension was inadequate. Julie found
employment as an actress. On Monday
19 September 1789 she played Hermione
in ‘Andromaque’ at the Comédie
Française. Some critics raved
although they were probably influenced
by her beauty. She also appeared in
tragic roles as Roxanne in Bajazet,
Alzirein Ariane, Aménaïde
in Tancrèdi, Émilie
in Cirra and Galatée in
Pigmalion. Some said that her
performances were uneven, others were
enthusiastic. At one of her perfomances
of Ariane, Louis XVI is reported to
have said, "If the theatre won't
have her, I will!"
She was admitted as
a permanent member of the Comédie
Française. But her rivals, envious
of her, conspired to ensure that Julie
only had secondary roles. Julie left
this theatre in 1790.
Her father suggested
a tour to the north which she undertook.
She visited Arras, Donau and Lille.
Her father had begun his studies in
Lille and she had appeared on the stage
of the local theatre in the autumn on
1787 in La Gageure Imprévue
by Sédaine, La Misanthrope
by Molière, La Veuve du Malabar
by Lemierre, La fainte par amour
and Gaston et Bayard both
by Pierre Louis de Belloy, Hypernmestre
by Riupeirous, Tancrèdi
and Mahomet by Voltaire. But
it was in De Belloy’s Zémire
that she won her greatest acclaim.
But now history intervened
with the outbreak of the French revolution.
Theatres were closed and reopened with
a new set of rules and actors. People
were employed or re-employed who were
in sympathy with the new regime. The
director Jacques-Marie Boutet de Monvel
had seen Julie perform in 1787 and invited
her to join his new company both as
an actress and administrator at the
Théâtre Palais du Royale.
This company was to rival the Comédie
Francais now renamed Théâtre
de la Nation in its support of the monarchy.
Here Julie relished comedy roles usually
as a coquette. She took part singing
at the opening ceremony of the theatre.
Her acting roles were as Amélie
in Pessimiste by Charles-Francois
Lebrun and then in Médecin
malgré tout le monde by Jean-André
Boulian, otherwise Dumaninant. She was
a success and she went on to create
other roles such as Mirza in L’esclavage
des nègres by Marie-Olympe
de Gouges, Hortense in L’amour et
la raison by Charles de l’Epinoy,
otherwise Pigtail Lebrun. She was La
Comtesse in Les Deux Figaro and
in many other roles, some twenty in
all.
In Mistress of the
Inn by Carlo Goldoni there was a
song, La jeune hôtesse,
which was admired and appeared in many
journals. This very dramatic three act
comedy was premiered on 13 January 1792.
Critics differed as to her performance.
Her voice was loud and dry said one,
others spoke of her gifts.
It would appear that
Julie was on the side of the revolutionaries.
Some of her friends and admirers formed
a troupe and salon concerts were given
in her house. On 16 October 1792 they
gathered together to celebrate the victorious
campaign in Belgium of General Charles-François
Duperier Dumouriez (1739- 1823) when
Jean-Paul Marat (1744-1793) burst in
and denounced Dumouriez accusing him
of keeping company with counter-revolutionaries
and prostitutes. He was verbally defeated
by the eloquent defence of François-Joseph
Talma and left with his tail between
his legs. Nonetheless there was terror
in the land. Some of the people Julie
visited in prison were later executed.
The revolution had
suppressed opera and other musical activities.
It seems that at this time Julie had
another lover in Phillippe-François
Nazaire Fabre d’Églantine (1755
- 1794) who dedicated his text Je
t’aime tant to her. It was set to
music by Marat.
By the end of 1792
Julie was back in Lille performing with
Pierre-Jean Garat (1764- 1823). The
programme of 22 November was as follows:
Symphony Haydn
(sources conflict
as to which one
it was)
Scene
and aria from Didon
Piccini (sung
by Julie)
Clarinet
Concerto Antoine-Nicholas
Henry (1722- 1842)
Piano Concerto Dussek
(not certain which one; played by Julie)
An Italian scene Cherubini
(unidentified) sung by Garat
An
Italian overture
?
Duo
from Armide sung
by Julie and Garat
Symphony
?
Piano
Sonata Amélie-Julie
Candeille (played
by Julie herself)
Rondeau
(Les Visitandines)
Devienne, sung
by Garat
Her other major project
was writing a three act comedy in prose,
Catherine ou la belle fermière
given its first performance on 17
November 1792. She also wrote the music.
It was a great success and was staged
about 150 times in Paris, Brussels and
Lille over the next 35 years. At the
height of the Revolution it was performed
113 times in six Paris theatres. In
1793 it was voted as among the top ten
plays. She took the title role herself
and sang many of her songs while playing
the harp. The work's success resulted
in its publication and copies were available
for purchase at her home. All this tremendous
success and she was only twenty five
years old.
There are those who
will say that the Terror ended with
the death of Maximilien-Marie-Isidore
Robespierre on 28 July 1794. The previous
year the patriotic work Le Général
Dumouries by Olympe de Gouges was
performed by Candeille’s company to
booing and jeering. Gouges acknowledged
writing the piece but told the disgruntled
audience that they were booing because
the performance was so awful. Julie
fled from the hall.
She wrote a one act
stage work Bathilde, ou Le duo,
a comedy that only lasted for four performances.
It had the redeeming feature of a piano
duet which she composed and which she
performed with Nicolas-Anselme Baptiste,
the elder (1761- 1835).
The time came for her
to settle down and on 3 November 1794
she married Louis-Nicolas De la Roche
who was a year her junior and a medical
practitioner. She never used his name
and the marriage was not successful.
They divorced in December 1797.
Her next two works
were indicative of her unconventional
interests. At the end of the Terror
a jailor called Cange at St Lazare prison
was a honourable man, which in the circumstances
was unprecedented, who at the end of
the hostilities gave half his salary
to one of his prisoners, Durand by name,
and the other half to his own family
and, in each case, did not identify
that he was the benefactor. Julie wrote
a play based on this story which was
premiered on 26 November 1794 and called
it Cange, ou le Commissionaire de
St Lazare.
It may be her own lifestyle
that inspired her next stage work La
Bayadère about a virtuous
Indian prostitute. Candeille was obviously
aware of her physical beauty and seductive
qualities and this prose work seems
to be an attempt to justify her sexually
liberated lifestyle as virtuous. Today
pop stars live such lifestyles and give
of their wealth to good causes earning
them regal honours.
Julie was exceptionally
vain and believed that any man was putty
in her hands and that she could get
away with anything because of her powers
to manipulate men and situations. This
new work had few performances and was
savaged by the critics. Julie tried
to defend herself and complained of
being persecuted.
She went on tour to
Belgium and Holland to recover from
this latest failure. But she failed
to appear at rehearsals even for her
own plays and became an antecedent of
Marilyn Monroe in her unreliability.
She took to writing novels and poetry.
She refused to honour her contract to
appear in two plays and was fined 28,000
livres and forbidden to appear on any
stage until 1 February 1801.
She returned to France
and made friends with the painter Anne-Luis
Girodet de Coussey (1767-1824) who painted
her portrait. She also had a similar
intimate relationship with the composer
Étienne-Nicolas Méhul
(1763- 1817) but they fell out when
she refused to take sides in a dispute
which involved one of her colleagues.
Candeille married for
the second time to one Jean Simons,
a carriage maker of Brussels, who had
come to Paris since his son Michael
was in love with an actress Anne Françoise
Elisabeth Lange (1772- 1825) who was
a niece of Julie's. He sought her advice
to prevent his son marrying her niece
but to no avail and there were two weddings,
the other being of Julie to the carriage
maker. This marriage and the romance
that preceded it were later the subject
of the play La Comédienne
by Francois- Guilluame-Jean-Stanislas
Andrieux.
Julie was a fine administrator
and kept her husband’s accounts and
was his secretary and clerk. During
five years she concentrated on her husband's
business and was a devoted wife. But
the activities of Napoleon and the uncertainty
that his politics engendered affected
many businesses. The nobility were no
longer ordering carriages and Simons
suffered bankruptcy and a breakdown
in 1802. Julie went back to work to
support her husband. Her father had
no pension either and she fought tirelessly
to redress this and was supporting two
men who had fallen on hard times. A
revival of her theatrical and musical
career was essential. She wrote a three-
act opera Ida, ou l’Orpheine de Berlin
which received a lukewarm reception.
Perhaps this was partly due to the fact
that the same subject had been the basis
of a play by Jean-Baptiste Radet (1752-
1830) which had had successful performances.
Candeille’s last performed
work was Louise, ou la reconcilitation
which was also badly received. It
was considered another work portraying
Julie’s vanity. She wrote other things
which did not come into the public domain.
When Louis XVIII came
to the throne in 1814, both she and
her father had their pensions restored
for their services to the theatre which
had been denied them by Napoleon. When
she was about to publish her Vers
sur la bonté, a poetry tribute
to the king on his birthday, Napoleon
returned and she fled to London. Here,
over the next sixteen months or so,
she gave concerts to earn her keep and
performed in concerts with Giovanni
Battista Viotti (1755- 1824), the pianist
Johann Baptiste Cramer (1771- 1858)
and the violinist Charles Philippe Lafont
(1781- 1839). In such august company
she thrived financially.
Napoleon abdicated
for the second time and Julie returned
to Paris in July 1816 and both she and
her father received increments in their
respective pensions from the King. She
took up teaching young people in various
subjects. Her husband was now a wreck
and died in 1821 and her father, suffering
from gout, died in 1827. She supported
his widow, his second wife, who was
younger than Julie. She spent much of
her time writing novels including Lydie,
ou les mariages manqués (1809),
Bathilde, reine des francs (1814),
Souvenirs de Brighton, Londres et
Paris (1818), Agnès de
France ou le XIIe siécle
(1821) and so on.
In April 1823 she married
for the third time to a widower and
painter, Antoine-Hilaire-Henri Périé
de Senovert (1780- 1833) who was employed
in the theatres of Paris. Julie secured
him a more superior position in 1826
as director of the school of design
in Nimes. She, however, was not happy
in this environment. The town was so
pro-monarchy that it was both nauseating
and sycophantic. There was a further
revolution in 1830 and politics was
destroying all that mattered to her.
She feared the loss of her pension and
that of her husband. By June 1831 she
was ill with a type of paralysis. She
held salon concerts and literary circle
events but when her husband died in
September 1833 she returned to Paris.
She proudly referred to herself as Mme
Périé, was clearly devoted
to him and never recovered from his
loss. She seemed to have made an improvement
in her own health but suffered an unexpected
relapse and died of apoplexy on 4 February
1834 in her fifty seventh year. She
was buried in a grave in the Père
Lachaise cemetery in Paris where she
had wished for a mausoleum for herself
and her husbands' ashes which, sadly,
never left Nimes.
The mystery is why
someone as gifted as Candeille is almost
unknown today. She was a child prodigy,
a fine musician, an accomplished actress,
a playwright, a novelist, a poet and,
in her time, one of the most influential
women in Europe. It may be true to say
that she was the first, or one of the
first most competent and gifted composers
and musicians in Europe. Had she been
a man it is almost certain that she
would be better known today.
Her instrumental works
are listed below:
Three Sonatas for clavecin
with the accompaniment of violin. G,
C, E flat
Concerto for piano
and string orchestra in D
Duo for two pianos
Two Sonatas for piano,
Op. 4, (lost)
Grand Sonata for piano
in E flat (under the name of Julie Simons)
Choix de morceau on
a valse by Mozart
Two grand Sonates for
piano Op. 8 D and G minor (under Julie
Simons)
Seven variations on
a nativity hymn from Portugal
Chant religieux with
8 variations for the piano
Fantasie for piano,
dédié à Mme Rivière
Nocturne for piano
trio (Fantasie no 5, op. 11)
Fantasie sur une jolie
Romance de Messrs Hoffman for piano
Grande fantasie, variations
on the tune Trempe ton pain
© Copyright
– Dr David C F Wright 1994. This article
or any part of it must not be copied,
stored in any retrieval system, downloaded
or used in any way whatsoever, even
quoting from it by any method whatsoever,
without the prior written consent of
the author. Failure to comply will be
a breach of the copyright laws and render
the offender liable to action at law.
This article is
dedicated to Anne-Louise de la Croix
who researched in Paris and premiered
the author's Viola Concerto
