Kendall, Elizabeth. Balanchine and the Lost Muse: Revolution and the Making of a Choreographer (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 547 in constructing an imagined person of the singer, simultaneously brought into being a modern form of subjectivity through melodramatic confession. Fishzon is at her most convincing when discussing neglected or marginal historical sources, such as popular feuilletons or advertising (there is, for instance, a particularly engaging account of an advert for a gramophone that speculatedaboutthefateofChekhov’sthreesisters,hadtheyhadrecordedmusic to divert them in their provincial boredom). Her accounts of music itself can be less confident; her account of the vocal qualities of the Russian contralto Mariia Gorlenko-Dolina (pp. 7–11), for example, establishes an ahistorical comparison between roles in operas written by Musorgskii and Rimskii-Korsakov and ‘the barely visible mezzo-soprano nanny roles in the operas of Puccini’ (p. 9), rather than examining works by, say, Rossini, or French composers such as Berlioz, Massenet or Saint-Saëns, less alone the roles taken by mezzo-sopranos and contraltos in Gluck’s operas (whose Orfeo ed Euridice was a crucial text of nineteenth-century fandom). Fishzon’s account of modernity can seem too insistent too. To be sure, the case-studies she provides all represent modes of consumption that were characteristics of turn-of-the-century Russia, yet ardent fandom, excessive appreciation and imaginative acts of participation (as well as critical anxiety about the same) have been constitutive of opera for much longer than that, and scholars of nineteenth-century opera and theatre will recognize much in common with earlier periods. That said, Fishzon does make a convincing case for the influence of late-imperial melodrama on the confessional practices and subjectivities of early Soviet culture (a theme traced most notably by Julie Cassiday). Overall, however, Fandom, Authenticity, and Opera: Mad Acts and Letter Scenes in Fin-de-Siècle Russia is an ingenious and accomplished piece of scholarship. It is, moreover, not just a compelling piece of advocacy for Russian opera, but also a refreshingly direct account of the pleasures — and perils — of being an opera fan more generally. Wadham College, University of Oxford Philip Ross Bullock Kendall, Elizabeth. Balanchine and the Lost Muse: Revolution and the Making of a Choreographer. Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford, 2013. xvi + 288 pp. Map. Illustrations. Cast of characters. Notes. Bibliography. Index. £18.00: $35.00. When Mikhail Mikhailov was reunited with George Balanchine in 1962, he ‘couldn’t believe that this very type of the old reserved Russian intelligentsia was long-ago comrade Georges’ (p. 242). Having been out of Soviet Russia for thirty-eight years Balanchine had seemingly become detached and less SEER, 92, 3, JULY 2014 548 human. Elizabeth Kendall’s book, however, is all about the very human and joyful Balanchivadze and deals with the years prior to his leaving Russia, a period that has not been explored in such depth in previous biographies. Born in St Petersburg in 1904, Balanchine defected in 1924. These years provide a window onto life in the Imperial Ballet School and the effect of the Revolution on the generation which emerged from the School in 1921. Kendall’s research is extensive. She has trawled through archives in both Helsinki and St Petersburg and gives us real insight into that early period. Legend has it that Marius Petipa, creator of The Sleeping Beauty (1890), influenced Balanchine’s choreography, but this is only partially true. Kendall believes that it was Ol´ga Preobrazhenskaia, with her modernist, innovative and visionary choreography, who most affected Balanchine and she finds traces in his later works (p. 129). The information on Preobrazhenskaia and later on Vera Kostrovitskaia tells us more about Balanchine’s early influences. The latter, who had been a pupil of Preobrazhenskaya and a disciple of Agrippina Vaganova was a close friend of Balanchine. Another friend, Piotr Gusev, who Balanchine chose for his first choreography Noch (Night), was also to develop pedagogic skills. Indeed, so highly regarded were Gusev’s skills that he was sent to Beijing (1955) to establish China’s first state ballet school. These early acquaintances are now regarded as giants of twentieth-century pedagogy. Given that his close friends became renowned teachers, it is hardly surprising that Balanchine would later instigate his own training system. In 1922 Balanchine danced in...