ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a biography of mid- to late-19th-century vocalist William Candidus. While sopranos exported themselves hopefully and annually across the Atlantic to musical Europe by the dozen, only a handful of tenor singers crossed the seas from America to make a career on the European continent during the nineteenth century, and, of these, one of the most successful of all was the Philadelphia German vocalist William Candidus. When he was a boy, William Candidus joined a military band as a cornet player. His first appearance on the stage was made in an operetta at the Concordia Theatre in Philadelphia. In 1878, he was engaged for the Mapleson opera season at Her Majesty's Theatre, London, and he was put on at the opening of the season – as a 'new boy' – singing Florestan in Fidelio alongside Eugenie Pappenheim and Conrad Behrens.
