Meliton Balanchivadze

Meliton Balanchivadze studied at Saint Petersburg Conservatory and Tbilisi Theological Seminary. Training under Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Julius Ernst Christian Johannsen and Vassily Samus is recorded. Natela Svanidze is recorded as having studied under Meliton Balanchivadze. The recorded working language is Georgian. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are opera. Distinctions recorded are Order of the Red Banner of Labour and People's artist of the Georgian SSR.

• Name — Meliton Balanchivadze • Born — 24 December 1862 • Birthplace — Banoja, Governorate of Kutais, Georgia, Russian Empire • Died — 21 December 1937 • Place of death — Kutaisi, Georgian SSR, Soviet Union • Era — 20th-century classical music

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.

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