George de Cuevas was a Chilean-born American ballet impresario and patron of the arts who was best known for the foundation of Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas.
Background
George de Cuevas was born Jorge de Cuevas on May 26, 1885 in Santiago, Chile. He was the son of Eduardo de las Cuevas, a banker who had immigrated to Chile from Spain, and of Manuela Bartholin. When he was seven, the family moved to Europe, eventually settling in Paris. De Cuevas later returned to Chile.
Education
In Chile De Cuevas earned a bachelor's degree from the Catholic University of Santiago, but then resumed residence in Europe.
Career
De Cuevas was probably in his mid-twenties when he attended his first ballet performance in Paris, where Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes was presenting annual seasons.
In 1912, de Cuevas published a novel, El amigo Jacques, which he reportedly wrote in three days simply to prove that one could do so.
During this period the socially ambitious de Cuevas paid a fee to reinstate the hereditary Spanish title of marques de Piedrablanca de Guana, to which he laid claim through his father. According to a story he later told, this title, though genuine, seemed cumbersome for an artist, in the view of Alfonso XIII, exiled king of Spain. The monarch proposed dubbing his friend "marques de Cuevas" instead. Although the title was never actually created, de Cuevas adopted it as a way of paying homage to the king.
In 1937, Rockefeller left his granddaughter a fortune estimated at $25 million. Two years later, at the New York World's Fair, de Cuevas first tried his hand at large-scale showmanship. He and his wife sponsored an exhibition of old master and French modern paintings valued at $30 million. But at the same time that he was beginning his career as a latter-day Medici, the paradoxical de Cuevas renounced his title, and in July 1940 became an American citizen, declaring, "Mister is good enough for me. "
In 1944 de Cuevas launched his first company, Ballet International, in New York City. Unlike other dance troupes of the time, Ballet International was to be a resident company, housed in its own theater, and so spared the grueling routine of extended tours.
De Cuevas engaged Bronislava Nijinska and Leonide Massine to head his choreographers and commissioned Salvador Dali, his favorite artist, to design the decor and costumes for two productions. Despite these lavish efforts the eight-week season, which opened on October 30, was a critical and financial failure.
Although principal dancers such as Andre Eglevsky and Marie-Jeanne were praised, the company as a whole was criticized for its weak ensemble dancing and mediocre repertory. More crucially, Ballet International lacked a clear personality that would distinguish it from America's other leading companies, Ballet Theatre and the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. The company disbanded the following year.
When in 1947 de Cuevas assumed the management of the Nouveau Ballet de Monte Carlo, he asked several dancers from the defunct Ballet International to accompany him. De Cuevas renamed his new company the Grand Ballet de Monte Carlo. Its fall season at the Alhambra Theater, a popular music hall in Paris, was a triumph. The repertory, combining traditional works with new ballets by the young American choreographers William Dollar and Edward Caton, was well-liked, and the American style of classical dancing, as exemplified by Rosella Hightower, Marjorie Tallchief, and much of the corps de ballet, proved to be influential on the French school.
Throughout the company's subsequent seasons in Paris, and on successful tours in Europe, South America, and northern Africa, de Cuevas emphasized the simple American roots of his Monaco-based company. At the same time he sought to create a glamorous, courtly milieu for himself and the ballet. Surrounded by his Pekingese dogs, he would receive the press sitting up in bed, as at a royal levee. He called his dancers his children; they in turn addressed him as Marquis.
The European ballet world delighted in his role of a grand seigneur, which de Cuevas, with his genius for publicity, played to the full. In 1950 he relocated his company to Paris and changed its name to Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas. When he brought the troupe to New York that autumn, he characterized the season as one of a native company returning home after three years abroad as ambassadors of American culture. Much to his disappointment the Grand Ballet played to mixed notices. As had been the case with Ballet International, most critics cited a lack of firm artistic direction as the company's major flaw.
No de Cuevas troupe danced in the United States again. In France, though, the Grand Ballet was continually acclaimed. At its height during the mid-1950s, it developed a large popular audience that was slowly acquiring a taste for classical dancing. The company's daily performances in Paris completely overshadowed the weekly ballet evening at the Opera. Regrettably, the Grand Ballet's emphasis was usually on extravagant production rather than on memorable choreography.
Although de Cuevas featured most of the leading dancers of the day, either as guest artists or as members of his company, none of the ballets created for it survives in repertory today. Typical of the grand gesture of which he was so fond was the elaborate costume ball de Cuevas hosted at Biarritz in September 1953. Two thousand guests frolicked at what was said to be Europe's largest postwar party. The Vatican newspaper, L'osservatore romano, denounced the masquerade as "an immoral, pagan, barbarous orgy, an abuse of money gained one does not know how. " De Cuevas sued, declaring this an insult to his wife's family, and asked one franc in damages. Under circumstances that provoked almost as much publicity, de Cuevas fought a duel in March 1958 with Serge Lifar, ballet master of the Paris Opera, after the latter allegedly insulted Hightower's performance in his ballet Noir et Blanc.
Tremendous public interest centered on this rivalry, much magnified by the press, between the two most powerful forces in the Paris ballet world. The seventy-three-year-old de Cuevas managed to scratch Lifar, twenty years his junior, lightly on the arm. Both men burst into tears, embraced, and were immediately reconciled.
Earlier that year de Cuevas changed his company's name for the third time, calling it the International Ballet of the Marquis de Cuevas.
In 1961 Rudolf Nureyev made his Western company debut in this production immediately after his defection from the Soviet Union. Mounted with sumptuous decor and costumes, the exorbitant cost of which forced de Cuevas to sell his Quai Voltaire apartment and part of his art collection, this ballet was de Cuevas' final extravagance.
In February he died at his villa, Les Delices, in Cannes, the night before the Riviera premiere of The Sleeping Beauty. The company cancelled the performance as a sign of mourning.
The International Ballet gave its last performances in 1962.
Achievements
Personality
De Cuevas was socially ambitious. He was multilingual, witty, fond of pomp but also possessing a spirit of buffoonery.
Connections
Though Cuevas was apparently homosexual, he married Margaret Rockefeller Strong, a granddaughter of John D. Rockefeller, in Paris on 3 August 1927. Around the time of the wedding, Cuevas had been serving as a secretary at the Chilean legation in London; the bride had been raised in Italy and studied chemistry at Cambridge University. The Cuevases would have two children.