The Georgians are a warrior people, so in Petersburg many of them entered the military academy. Another characteristic trait of Georgians is their love of music and dance. Therefore it is not surprising that among the first students of the Petersburg Conservatory, which opened in 1862, was the Georgian Kharlampy Savaneli, who became a friend of Tchaikovsky. Thirty-seven years later, the ambitious thirty-seven-year-old Meliton Balanchivadze left Georgia to enter the same conservatory.
By that time the elder Balanchivadze had already lived a stormy artistic life. The son of an archbishop, Meliton had studied at the seminary and at age seventeen became a singer with the opera theater in the Georgian capital, Tiflis—first in the chorus, then as a soloist in
In Petersburg, the overactive Meliton continued to advocate Georgian folk music, which was little known there. He organized choirs, performed in special Georgian concerts, and published articles about the national style of singing. But he expanded in every possible (and often impossible) direction after winning an enormous sum in the state lottery; Balanchine spoke to me of one hundred thousand rubles.
Meliton gave the respected Petersburg musicologist Nikolai Findeizen the idea of collecting the letters of Mikhail Glinka, and paid for their publication, the first of its kind. Meliton threw his money around, making unrepaid loans to his numerous Georgian friends and financing Georgian restaurants all over the city, which went broke one after the other. Then he made a fateful mistake. According to Balanchine, his father wanted to get involved in a major financial operation—a crucible factory, which required importing special machinery from the West. He went bankrupt.16
In 1917, Meliton Balanchivadze returned from Petrograd to his homeland, where an independent Georgian republic with the first democratically elected socialist government in the world had been proclaimed. The republic lasted only a few years, however, before it was swallowed up by Communist Russia. Balanchivadze became a leader of musical life there, chairing numerous societies, councils, and committees, and died in 1937, a highly respected and decorated People’s Artist.
At the time of his father’s departure George (named for the saint) was in his fifth year at the Petrograd ballet school. His friends still called him “Georges,” in the French manner. When in 1924 Georges became a member of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in France, the famous impresario shortened his Georgian surname to the still exotic-sounding but easier-to-pronounce “Balanchine”; with his arrival in the United States in 1933, “Georges” would change to “George,” the final transformation of his name.
Young Georges was nicknamed “Rat” because he was secretive, taciturn, and always wary and because he habitually sniffled, revealing his front teeth. In the enormous school where Georges and his classmates spent their days, he felt abandoned by his parents, despite the impressive appearance of the school building, designed by Carlo Rossi and located on one of the most beautiful streets of the city.
That was a typical Petersburg conflict—the pompous facade concealing a multitude of minor tragedies. And yet at the same time, again typically for Petersburg, the facade imperceptibly influenced the lives behind it, decisively forming (and deforming) the personalities of the building’s inhabitants.
This Petersburg facade certainly had a powerful influence on Georges, who learned to mask his emotions. Born in Petersburg, he became the quintessential Petersburger. Restraint became the determining trait of his character. He later admitted that this restraint had been inculculated in him in Petersburg, and he spoke reverently of Theater Street.
