Meliton Balanchivadze (1862-1937) – Georgia

[Christopher]

Meliton Balanchivadze (1862-1937) – Georgia

მელიტონ ბალანჩივაძე

https://ka.wikipedia.org/wiki/მელიტონ_ბალანჩივაძე
(google translate)

Meliton Anton Balanchivadze (born January 5 , 1863 , [December 24, 1862 BCE] , village Banoja - December 21 , 1937 , Kutaisi ) - Georgian composer and public figure, founder of Georgian opera music. People's Artist of Georgia ( 1933 ).
He received his first elementary education at Kutaisi Theological College. Here she participated in a student team and drew the attention of head coach Vladimir Agniashvili . Soon he formed a choir of students and taught chanting. 1879, after moving to Tbilisi , Balanchivadze was accepted into the chorus of the Exarchate of Georgia. Team Leader f. Ashwork taught him music theory and appointed him as his assistant. Since 1880 Balanchivadze has been invited by Philemon Koridze to the Tbilisi Opera House . Soon there were solo parties in operas "Eugene Onegin" (Zaretsky) and "Faust" (Valentine).
1882 Balanchivadze formed a Georgian folk song choir, which held a concert in Tbilisi in 1883 . It was the first time that Georgian folk songs were performed publicly, which had great cultural and national significance. 1883 - 1886 Balanchivadze, together with Koridze, traveled all over Georgia to record and study folk song and chant. Since 1886 he has been singing L.A. In the team founded by Agniashvili and even led by him for a while. At the same time the orchestra, which l. Along with Agniashvili's team, he performed "Georgian Popuri" composed of folk songs at concerts.
1889 Balanchivadze introduces his listeners to his three novels - "Nana", "You Gettrap Marad" and "Odessa I Love You" (the first classical samples of the romance genre in Georgian music). 1889 - 1895 Balanchivadze studied at the St. Petersburg Conservatory for vocal instruction (with Prof. V. Samus), then moved to the composition class with the advice of the Conservatory Director Anton Rubinstein . He worked in Rimsky-Korsakov , Russia for 28 years, propagated the art of Georgian music, ran Georgian music evenings, performed as a barber and singer. Here he wrote the opera "Tamar Tsbiere" (by A. Tsereteli "Tamar Tsbiere", librettoVasily Velichkos ) First Act and Parts of the Third Act, first performed on December 20, 1897 by Russian actors in the St. Petersburg Noble Assembly Hall. Outside Georgia, the first Georgian opera set up in Russia was highly endorsed (repeated 1912 there). 1906 In St. Petersburg Balanchivadze took part in the a. Rubinstein's opera "Demon" in Georgian. 1907 sponsors the publication of Mikhail Glinka's letters ( St. Petersburg , 1908 , 250 letters). 1917 He returned to Georgia, where he was widely involved in music and public life. 1918He founded a music school in Kutaisi, which bears his name today. Actively participated in the reorganization of the Tbilisi Conservatory; Was the Honorary Chairman of the Society of Young Georgian Musicians, Chairman of the Board of the Music Society of Georgia, participated in the establishment of folk song choirs; Headed the folk music gathering and study commission; He headed the Music Department of Public Education; 1929 - 1931 - Director of Batumi and 1935 - Director of Kutaisi Music School. On April 6, 1926 , Balanchivadze's "Tamar Tsbieri" (libretto by Konstantin Potskhverashvili ), staged in a patriotic spirit, lyricized at the Tbilisi Opera House .1937 This opera, titled "Darejan Tsbier", was performed at the Georgian Art Decade in Moscow and was highly praised. Balanchivadze's other works include Cantata "Glory to Zahes" ( 1927 ), " Student Song" for the Female Choir and the "Georgian National March" Symphony Orchestra. Has received state awards.
He is buried in Kutaisi , in the Pantheon of public figures in Greenvavila.
Meliton Balanchivadze (Georgian: მელიტონ ბალანჩივაძე; 24 December 1862 – 21 December 1937) was a Georgian opera singer, composer and a celebrated member of Georgia's cultural scene, both under the Russian Empire and during the country's independence. Two of his sons, George and Andria, had illustrious careers, the former as a pioneering choreographer in the United States, and the latter as Soviet Georgia's leading classical composer.
Career
Born in the village of Banoja and trained at the seminaries of Kutaisi and Tbilisi, Balanchivadze began an operatic career at the Tbilisi Opera House in 1880. In 1882, he founded a Georgian folk ensemble and organized the first ever folk concert in Tbilisi in the next year. From 1883 to 1886, he travelled to various parts of Georgia, collecting folk songs and training folk choirs. From 1889 to 1895, he studied at St. Petersburg Conservatory where one of his teachers was the composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Between 1895 and 1917, he toured Russia giving concerts of Georgian folk music.
After the 1917 Bolshevik coup, he returned to his native Georgia, where he taught and composed. He authored the first original Georgian opera, Tamar the Wily, later renamed into Darejan the Wily (თამარ ცბიერი, დარეჯან ცბიერი)—first performed by Russian artists at the Hall of the Russian Nobility Council in 1897 — as well as numerous choral works, as mass, and other church services.[1][2]
Family
Balanchivadze was married twice. By his first marriage, to Gayane Eristavi, he had two children. One of them, Apollon, was a colonel in the White Russian forces, notably serving in the Ice March of 1918.
He married, secondly (probably in 1905 or 1906), to Maria Nikolayevna Vasilyeva, a St. Petersburg native. The couple had three children:
•   Tamara, a painter, died 1943, during the blockade of Leningrad
•   George, emigrated to the United States and became an influential ballet choreographer
•   Andria became a leading composer in Soviet Georgia


https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=7&v=hXtw1stX88k – God Almighty – aria, baritone + orchestra

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUleBnLvdrY - King Giorgi's aria from the opera "Darejan the Wily"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqL6eVAnjU0 - Gocha's aria from Darejan the Wily (piano accompaniment)