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The Nutcracker

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A performance of The Nutcracker

The story of The Nutcracker and the Mouse King was written by E. T. A. Hoffmann (1816). Alexandre Dumas' adaptation of the story was set to music by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (after the libretto of Marius Petipa) and has become the most popular ballet performed around Christmas time. It is appealing to children and adults alike and has been a standard yearly feature of theatres in many cities.

Story

The story has been published in many book versions including colorful children's versions. The plot revolves around a blonde German girl named Clara Stahlbaum.Template:Fn

Act I

The curtain opens to see the Stahlbaums' house, where a Christmas party is being held. Clara, her little brother Fritz, and their mother and father are celebrating with friends and family, when the mysterious godfather, Herr Drosselmeyer, enters. He quickly produces a large bag of gifts for all the children. All are very happy, except for Clara, she being the only one who does not receive a gift. Herr Drosselmeyer then produces three life-sized dolls, who each take a turn to dance. When the dances are done, Clara approaches Herr Drosselmeyer asking for a gift. Sadly, Drosselmeyer is out of presents. Clara runs to her mother in a fit of tears.

Drosselmeyer conjures up a Nutcracker. Clara is happy, but her brother Fritz is jealous, and breaks the Nutcracker. Drosselmeyer chases him off and mends the toy.

The party ends and the Stahlbaum family go to bed, but Clara is concerned about her Nutcracker, and comes out to the Christmas tree to see it. She falls asleep with the Nutcracker in her arms. When the clock strikes midnight, Clara hears the sound of mice. She wakes up and tries to run away, but the mice stop her. The Nutcracker and his band of soldiers rise to defend Clara, and the Mouse King leads his mice into battle.

A conflict ensues, and when Clara helps the Nutcracker by throwing her slipper at the Mouse King, the Nutcracker seizes his opportunity and stabs him. The mouse dies. The mice retreat, taking their dead leader with them. Clara cries for her Nutcracker, who is also dead, and her tears bring him back to life.

The two then dance, and the Nutcracker turns into a prince, who leads her into the land of the Sugar Plum Fairy, where dancing Snow Flakes greet them.

Act II

The people of the land dance for Clara and the Prince, and Clara wakes up under the Christmas tree with the Nutcracker in her arms.

History of the ballet

Tchaikovsky composed the ballet ("Щелкунчик" in Russian) in 1891–1892, but he was unsatisfied with it and considered it to be one of his less successful pieces.

The first performance of the ballet was held as a double premiere together with Tchaikovsky's last opera Iolanta on December 18, 1892, at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, Russia. The ballet was conducted by Riccardo Drigo and choreographed by Lev Ivanov. However, this performance had just limited success.

The current popularity of The Nutcracker is due in part to Willam Christensen, former Ballet master of the San Francisco Ballet, who imported the work to the United States in 1944. The success of the ballet and George Balanchine's choreography for his own 1954 version created a winter tradition of Nutcracker performances in the United States.

The music

The music in Tchaikovsky's ballet is some of the composer's most popular. The music belongs to the Romantic tradition and contains some of his most memorable melodies which are frequently used in television and film. The Trepak, or Russian dance, is one of the most recogizable pieces in the ballet, along with the famous Waltz of the Flowers and March, as well as the ubiquitous Dance of the Sugar-Plum Fairy. The ballet contains surprisingly advanced harmonies and a wealth of melodic invention unsurpassed in ballet music. Nevertheless, the composer's reverence for Rococo and late 18th-century music can be detected in passages such as the Overture, the "entrée des parents," and "Tempo di Grossvater" in Act I.

One novelty in Tchaikovsky's original score was the use of the celesta, a new instrument Tchaikovsky had discovered in Paris. He wanted it genuinely for the character of the Sugar-Plum Fairy to characterise her because of its "heavenly sweet sound". It appears not only in her "Dance," but also in other passages in Act II. Tchaikovsky also uses toy instruments during the Christmas party scene.

Suites derived from this ballet became very popular on the concert stage. The composer himself extracted a suite of seven movements from the ballet, but that authoritative move has not prevented later hands from arranging other selections and sequences of numbers. Eventually one of these ended up in Disney's Fantasia. In any case, The Nutcracker Suite should not be mistaken for the complete ballet.

Although the original ballet is only ninety minutes long, and therefore much shorter than Swan Lake or The Sleeping Beauty, some modern staged performances have omitted or re-ordered some of the music, or inserted selections from elsewhere, thus adding to the confusion over the suites. In fact, most of the very famous versions of the ballet have had the order of the dances slightly re-arranged, if they have not actually altered the music.

  • A filmed German-American co-production, first telecast in the United States in 1965, and choreographed by Kurt Jacob, featured a cast made up of several companies, including Edward Villella, Patricia McBride and Melissa Hayden from the New York City Ballet. It cut the ballet down to a one-act version lasting slightly less than an hour, and drastically re-ordered all the dances, even to the point of altering the storyline (Clara and the Nutcracker must now journey to the Castle of the Sugar Plum Fairy, where the Fairy will wave her wand and turn the Nutcracker back into a Prince). But all of the music was from the actual "Nutcracker" ballet, and not from any other source.
  • In Baryshnikov's version, staged in 1976 and first broadcast on TV in 1977, all of the original Tchaikovsky score is used, but the order of most of the dances in Act II (the section of the ballet with the least plot) is changed, and the "Arabian Dance" had to be omitted in the television version in order to bring the program in at ninety minutes with two commercial breaks.
  • In the Royal Ballet, London's 1985 version, Tchaikovsky's score is used and the original order of the dances is not changed at all, but the Mother Ginger dance is omitted.
  • The 1954 George Balanchine version, first broadcast on TV in 1957, and filmed for movie theatres in 1993, adds to Tchaikovsky's complete score an entr'acte that the composer wrote for Act II of "The Sleeping Beauty". It is used as a transition between the departure of the guests and the battle with the mice. During this transition, Clara's mother appears in the living room and throws a blanket over the girl, who has crept downstairs and fallen asleep on the sofa; then Drosselmeyer appears, repairs the Nutcracker, and binds the jaw with a handkerchief. And the "Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairy" is moved from near the end of Act II of "The Nutcracker" to near the beginning of the second act, just after the Sugar Plum Fairy makes her first appearance.
  • Rudolf Nureyev's 1967 version, in which he dances both the roles of Drosselmeyer and the Prince, but not the Nutcracker, completely changes the order of all the musical numbers. It was filmed in 1968.

However, nearly all of the CD and LP recordings of the complete ballet present Tchaikovsky's score exactly as he originally conceived it.

Ballet

Act One

The Waltz of the Snowflakes from Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker
  • 1 The Christmas Tree
  • 2 Marche
  • 3 Children's Gallop And Entry of the Parents
  • 4 Scene dansante: Drosselmeyer's Arrival and Distribution of Presents
  • 5 The Nutcracker and Grandfather Dance
  • 6 Departure of the Guests - Night
  • 7 The Battle
  • 8 A Pine Forest In Winter
  • 9 Waltz of the Snowflakes

===Act Two

  • 1 Introduction
  • 2 Arrival of Clara and the Prince
  • 3 Spanish Dance
  • 4 Arabian Dance
  • 5 Chinese Dance
  • 6 Russian Dance (Trepak)
  • 7 Dance of the Mirlitons
  • 8 Dance of the Clowns (Mother Ginger)
  • 9 Waltz of the Flowers
  • 10 Pas de Deux (Adagio)
  • 10a Variation I- Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy
  • 10b Variation II- Tarantella
  • 11 Coda
  • 12 Final Waltz and Apotheosis

Suite

The suite derived and abridged from the ballet became more popular for a time than the ballet itself, partly due to its inclusion in Walt Disney's Fantasia. The outline below represents the selection and sequence of the Nutcracker Suite culled by the composer.

  • I. Overture
  • II. Dances
    • A. Marche
    • B. Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy
    • C Russian Dance
    • D Arabian Dance
    • E. Chinese Dance
    • F. Danse mirlitons
  • III. Waltz of the Flowers

The version heard in Fantasia, however, omitted the Overture and the Marche.

Footnotes

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