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Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky |
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| In 1890, following the success of composer Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky’s ballet, The Sleeping Beauty, Ivan Alexandrovitch Vsevolojsky, director of the Imperial Theaters in Russia, proposed a partnership between Tchaikovsky and choreographer Marius Petipa. Vsevolojsky suggested The Nutcracker of Nuremberg based on the book L’Histoire d’un Casse Noisette (The Story of a Hazelnut-cracker) by Alexandre Dumas père, itself based on E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Nussknacker und Mausekönig (The Nutcracker and the King of the Mice). Neither Petipa nor Tchaikovsky liked the story and refused the commission. | |||||
Vsevolojsky persisted and eventually convinced Petipa to take charge of the production and to write a new scenario. Petipa’s creation of the Sugarplum Fairy to rule the Kingdom of Sweets (an excuse for a fashionable set of divertissements) and the relegation of Drosselmeyer to a minor role, though satisfying to Petipa, displeased Tchaikovsky who felt these changes watered down the strength of the story. In 1891, by commissioning a one-act opera as well, Vsevolojsky convinced Tchaikovsky to participate. Despite his misgivings about the plot and the feeling that he was not writing the music from his heart, Tchaikovsky completed the first draft rapidly by July 7, 1891. The orchestration did not begin until January 1892 and took three months to complete. “And now it is finished, Casse-Noisette is all ugliness. … It is infinitely poorer than The Sleeping Beauty,” he wrote. However as time progressed the music endeared itself to Tchaikovsky. “Strange that when I was composing the ballet I kept thinking that it wasn’t very good but that I would show them [the Imperial Theaters] what I can do when I began the opera. And now it seems that the ballet is good and the opera not so good.” The Nutcracker premiered on December 17, 1892 by the Imperial Russian Ballet at the Maryinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, Russia. Although Czar Alexander III was delighted with the ballet, critics were far less kind and The Nutcracker was not deemed a success at its first performances. Tchaikovsky died of cholera in St. Petersburg on November 6, 1893, less than a year after the first performance, and long before his ballet would see critical and commercial success. |
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Worldwide Popularity |
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Despite its initial disappointment, a number of ballet companies continued to produce The Nutcracker, though frequently just in part or with great variation from the original score and choreography. It gained popularity inside of Russia, but the ballet was not performed outside of the country until 1934, when Nicholas Sergeyev staged it at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre in England. The first full-length production in the United States was on December 29, 1944 by San Francisco Opera Ballet at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco. |
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A decade later, in creating the first full-length ballet for the New York City Ballet, master choreographer George Balanchine asserted The Nutcracker's hold over the American public. Balanchine had danced in The Nutcracker at the Maryinsky Theater in a variety of roles ranging from child prince to Mouse King and Trepak. In February 1954, Balanchine collaborated with The New York City Ballet, creating choreography that is probably the most emulated around the world today. Their production paved the way for the popularity of The Nutcracker and established its legacy as a Christmas tradition that would become the most attended holiday ballet ever produced. Less than 60 years later, the number of Nutcracker productions staged, in the United States alone, has jumped from that first one in 1944 to more than one hundred fifty each year. |
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