Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker

The Nutcracker ballet premiered in December 1892 at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg together with the opera Iolanta (or Iolanthe). At that point, no one suspected that Tchaikovsky, who composed the music for both, had less than a year to live. The day of the premiere was a day of fairy-tale endings, with one story about a blind girl whose sight is restored by the power of love and another about a little girl named Marie whose love transforms a toy nutcracker into a handsome prince.

One thing that has not changed since The Nutcracker entered the international ballet repertoire is its popularity (people will always need fairy tales). In other regards, The Nutcracker has undergone remarkable transformations over the course of its 120-year history

The ballet’s basic plot first came into being as a novella by the German writer E.T.A. Hoffman titled The Nutcracker and the Mouse King. Hoffman’s young heroine is named Marie, but in 1892 she appeared on the stage as Clara, having for some reason been given the name of Marie’s favorite doll in Hoffman’s version. The ballet’s young protagonist eventually became Marie, but when World War I inflamed anti-German sentiment, she evolved into Masha. On the Russian stage she remains Masha to this day. Her brother Fritz, on the other hand, being an unappealing sort, was allowed to retain his German name, at least for a while. When the name Fritz began to be too strongly associated with Fascism, Fritz turned into Misha.

Another transformation has to do with the holiday being celebrated in the ballet. During the Soviet period, that magical Christmas eve had no choice but to turn into a magical New Year’s Eve, and the ballet was scarcely performed in the Soviet Union at all until the 1930s, when the ban on yolki (Christmas trees, which in Soviet times were treated exclusively as New Year’s trees) was lifted and Soviet children were again allowed to celebrate a holiday during the cold, dark days following the winter solstice.

The powers that be in Russia have always played fast and loose with the composer’s life and work. His tragic ending of Swan Lake was replaced with a triumph of love, despite the hopeless desperation suggested by the music. And Tchaikovsky has been made out to be a compiler of folk melodies that he slightly adapted and blended into his compositions, akin to Glinka, who is credited as saying, “Music is composed by the people and we composers merely arrange it.”

For many years Tchaikovsky’s homosexuality and the disturbing rumors about his death were simply ignored. All that Russians really knew was the kindly and cheerful folk composer who gave Russian children the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy and numerous charming tales.

This conception of Tchaikovsky is blind to the fact that he specifically chose Hoffman’s rather gloomy and mystical work for his ballet, albeit in Alexandre Dumas’ slightly subdued adaptation, which was further sugarcoated by the choreographer Marius Petipa. Indeed, The Nutcracker is not really such light, cheerful fare – inanimate objects come threateningly to life and evil mice and other mysterious creatures invade the nursery, embodying the darkest fears of childhood. But The Nutcracker was generally treated as a charming New Year’s tale and nothing more.

There is no denying that The Nutcracker is indeed a charming tale, that it is generally performed around the New Year, or that it makes use of folk motifs and is greatly appealing to children with its dancing dolls and magical creatures. Furthermore, Masha, whether in the person of Galina Ulanova or Yekaterina Maximova, has always been a figure of incredible poetry and tenderness. However, in 2001, when a new Mariinsky Theater production of The Nutcracker was designed by the renowned avant-garde artist Mikhail Chemiakin, the ballet took on an entirely different tenor.

Chemiakin, who has illustrated a number of Hoffman’s works, recalled how he was almost put to sleep by the classic Balanchine production of the ballet and was surprised how dull the tale was made to be. The following day he received a proposal to collaborate with Valery Gergiev on a new production. At first, the idea of working on The Nutcracker seemed utterly unappealing. But in the end, “The most important thing Gergiev used to ‘buy’ me and the reason I agreed to this venture was his music. ‘Go find my new recording of The Nutcracker – it just came out’ he told me. A few hours later, when I turned on the record, I barely recognized the music that we’ve all known since childhood. Gergiev really discovered the powerful tragedy that was hidden within this work.”

So have children been deprived of a beautiful New Year’s tale?

In Konstantin Paustovsky’s short story “The Ruffled Sparrow,” the mother of the female protagonist (whose name, significantly, is Masha) is dancing in a ballet – not The Nutcracker, but another fairy tale set to music, Prokofiev’s Cinderella. However, the miracle that takes place in the story would have been perfectly fitting in The Nutcracker.

And when the performance was over and the music began to sing so loudly and cheerfully of happiness that the people inwardly smiled and could only wonder why that lucky Cinderella had tears in her eyes – at that very moment a tiny, ruffled sparrow burst into the hall and began darting and dashing back and forth between the theater’s staircases. It had obviously just escaped from a brutal battle. It circled above the stage, blinded by the hundreds of lights, and everyone noticed that something in its beak was unbearably shiny, like a crystal branch. The hall turned loud and then quiet. The conductor raised his hand to silence the orchestra. In the back rows, people stood up in order to see what was happening on the stage. The sparrow flew toward Cinderella. She extended her arms toward it, and the sparrow, midflight, dropped the tiny crystal bouquet into the palm of her hand. With trembling fingers, Cinderella pinned it onto her outfit. The conductor waved his baton and the orchestra came back to life. The applause was so thunderous that the theater lights shook. The sparrow flew up to the theater’s dome, alighted on the chandelier, and began to groom its battle-ruffled feathers. Cinderella bowed and laughed. Had Masha not known for sure that this Cinderella was her mother, she would never have guessed it.

Paustovsky’s charming story brilliantly expresses the uplifting feeling we get from Tchaikovsky’s music. Like Paustovsky’s writing, Tchaikovsky’s music gladdens the heart, raises the spirits, and “sings of happiness.” It is probably good and natural that as children we experience this side of Tchaikovsky’s music, and when we grow up, we develop a deeper appreciation of the sinister aspect of the Black Swan or the Mouse King. As adults, we are better equipped to deal with life’s darker side.

But there are wonders that compensate for the darkness, and one of them is great music.

The first performance of The Nutcracker was not a huge success. The libretto was criticized for being
“lopsided” and for not being faithful to the Hoffmann tale. Much criticism focused on the featuring of children so prominently in the ballet. Reception was better for Tchaikovsky’s score. Critics called it “astonishingly rich in inspiration” and “from beginning to end, beautiful, melodious, original, and characteristic.”