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The Nutcracker is the story of a little girl named Clara and a wooden doll that was given to her on Christmas Eve many years ago. Clara lives with her brother, Fritz, and her parents, Herr and Frau Burgermeister and his wife.
As the ballet opens, we see Herr Drosselmeyer on his way to a Christmas party at the Silberhaus home, carrying presents for his godchildren, Clara and Fritz. Pausing to check his watch outside the home, he finds himself surrounded by a group of children who discover a present he has left on the ground, and they return it to him.
Meanwhile, preparations are being made in the home of Clara’s parents, Herr and Frau Burgermeister, for their annual Christmas Eve party. After the other guests have arrived, Herr Drosselmeyer appears, gives presents to the children and entertains all with life-size mechanical dolls. Her Drosselmeyer has a special present for his godchild Clara: a wonderful Nutcracker doll. In jealousy, her brother Fritz throws The Nutcracker on the floor and breaks it, but Herr Drosselmeyer quickly mends it. The party continues with gifts, dancing and refreshments until the guests depart.
In the quiet of the night, Clara steals back to the parlor to hug her Nutcracker doll. The atmosphere seems to change, and in a room bather in moonlight, Clara curls up on the floor with her Nutcracker and falls asleep. Herr Drosselmeyer appears as a magical character who leads her into a world of fantasy and imagination.
Clara dreams a marvelously vivid dream in which the Christmas tree grow, the rats attack the toy soldiers and a terrible battle begins with cannons. The Rat King and The Nutcracker Prince fight a great duel. Most exciting of all, The Nutcracker doll becomes a real Prince whose life she saves.
As a reward, The Nutcracker prince send Clara on a enchanted journey through the Land of Snow where she sees a beautiful Snow Queen and handsome King dance with the swirling Snowflakes.
At last Clara, accompanied by her guide, Herr Drosselmeyer, arrive in the Land of Sweets. Two lovely Little Fairies wait expectantly while the sleep Pages and Jesters let their minds wander and their bodies rest. As Clara arrives, the Fairies give the court pages a wake-up call and all the wonderful inhabitants of this beautiful land enter the throne room to pay homage to Clara. Finally, the beautiful SugarPlum Fairy arrives to greet Clara and have her sit on a special throne.
One after another, Spanish Chocolate, Arian Coffee, Chinese Tea, Russian Trepak and Mother Ginger with her impish children, perform. Enchanted flowers waltz and the SugarPlum Fairy honor Clara before she leaves by dancing a Pas de Deux with her Cavalier. They all wave Clara on to happy dreams, and finally, Clara wakes up in her own world…Christmas morning.
The Nutcracker Ballet
The first performance of The Nutcracker ballet took place in St. Petersburg, Russia, on December 18, 1892. One of the directors of the Imperial Ballet, which was sponsored by the Czar of Russia, thought that a popular story by a famous German author would make a perfect Christmas ballet. This director, Marius Petipa, also choreographed two other ballets you may know of: Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake. Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, who is today, thanks to his ballet music, probably the best known composer in the world, composed the music for those ballets.
Petipa asked Tchaikovsky to write music for The Nutcracker, and gave him specific instructions to write a march, a Chinese dance, an Arabian dance, a Russian dance, and so forth. Today, most choreographers design dances to music that is already composed, but in the last century, ballet music was usually “ordered” by choreographers, with instructions to write so many measures of music with a specific rhythm and tempo, and so many measures of another rhythm and tempo. It is a mark of Tchaikovsky’s genius that he could write “on order” and produce some of the most beautiful music the world has known. (Tchaikovsky also wrote symphonies, piano music, the famous 1812 Overture, and many other works.)
The German author of The Nutcracker story, E. T. A. Hoffman, lived in the 19th century in Germany. He wrote several stories in which dolls play an important part. Another famous ballet to a story by Hoffman, Coppelia, is about a mechanical doll that is so life-like that the young men of the village flirt with her. In the opera Tales of Hoffman, there is a wind-up doll that sings until her spring winds down, which makes her voice go flat as she collapses in the middle. Today many people are excited about things that can be done by computer. In the 19th century, mechanical objects were exciting to inventors. It’s no surprise that mechanical dolls and other toys appear in The Nutcracker.
There are many variations on the basic story of The Nutcracker. Every year during Christmas season, you can see at least three versions on television: one by American Ballet Theatre, one by Pacific Northwest Ballet, and one by the Bolshoi Ballet. You will see, in person, another version by Olympic Ballet Theatre. But the basic story remains the same. At a Christmas party given by her parents, a young girl named Clara is given a nutcracker by her godfather (or uncle), Herr Drosselmeyer, a toymaker. (This is not just a metal pincher to crack nuts, but a large wooden soldier-doll with a mouth that opens and closes when a lever in his back is raised or lowered. When a nut is placed in the doll’s mouth and the lever is worked, the nut is cracked.) Clara’s brother is jealous, and grabs The Nutcracker away from Clara. He breaks The Nutcracker, but Herr Drosselmeyer mends it by wrapping a bandage around its jaw. After the party is over and everyone has gone to bed, Clara comes back to see that her beloved Nutcracker is all right. She falls asleep holding The Nutcracker. While she sleeps, mice and rats come out and do battle with toy soldiers. The Nutcracker comes to life to lead the toy soldiers, and wins the battle.
In some versions, including Olympic Ballet Theatre’s, Herr Drosselmeyer appears after the battle and takes Clara to the Land of Snow and then the Land of Sweets. In other versions, The Nutcracker turns into a handsome prince and takes Clara to visit his mother, the Queen of the Land of Sweets. In all versions, there is a beautiful dance of the Snow Queen and King and Snowflakes, and numerous dances by sweets and treats in the Land of Sweets. There are candycanes, Spanish chocolate, Arabian coffee, Chinese tea, marzipan flowers, Mother Ginger, and a SugarPlum Fairy. After everyone has danced for Clara, she returns home and wakes by the Christmas tree, not sure if she has been dreaming or not.
Although Marius Petipa had planned to choreograph The Nutcracker, he became ill and his assistant, Lev Ivanov, was asked to do the choreography. Ivanov had already won acclaim for his choreography for parts of Swan Lake. (Petipa did the two acts that take place in a palace, and Ivanov did the two acts that take place at the lake, with dancers playing the parts of swans.) In The Nutcracker, Ivanov was limited by the story of the first act to traditional choreography, but when Clara travels to the Land of Snows, Ivanov was able to introduce a new type of movement, turning dancers into snowflakes, as he had earlier turned dancers into swans. Similarly, in the Land of Sweets, Ivanov made each dance characteristic of the nationality of the dancers (Spanish, Russian, and Chinese) or type of sweets (for example, big, swirling movements for the flowers, and quick, tiny steps for the Sugar Plum Fairy).
When Tchaikovsky was asked to write “fairy-like music” for the SugarPlum Fairy, he decided to use a new instrument, the celeste, for her dance. There was no celeste in Russia at the time, so he sent friends to Germany for one. They brought it back in secret, and it was kept hidden until time to perform the music, because Tchaikovsky didn’t want other composers to steal his idea.
Nowdays, The Nutcracker is performed all over the world every year at Christmas, by ballet companies large and small. For many people The Nutcracker is their introduction to ballet. In the United States, the San Francisco Ballet Company was the first to present a full-length performance of The Nutcracker, in 1944. Ten years later, the New York City Ballet first presented its full-length version, complete with a Christmas tree that grows to an enormous size after Clara falls asleep. That version was choreographed by George Balanchine, who was trained at the Imperial Ballet School in St. Petersburg. The American Ballet Theatre version of The Nutcracker that is shown on television was choreographed by Mikail Baryshnikov, who also trained at that school (after its name was changed, following the Russian Revolution). So the tradition begun is 1892 has been preserved by artistic descendants of the original choreographer.
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