A Short History of The Nutcracker

The Nutcracker is a staple of the Christmas season and one of the most famous ballets to ever exist. If you aren’t familiar with the ballet, allow me to give a brief description of the story. The ballet follows a girl named Clara (sometimes named “Marie” or “Masha” in certain productions) who receives a nutcracker from her uncle at a Christmas Eve party that her family hosts. Before the party ends, her little brother Fritz breaks her beloved nutcracker and her uncle performs what Clara suspects to be magic to fix it. After the party, Clara falls asleep with the nutcracker in her arms. While she is asleep, she dreams that she shrinks down to the size of the nutcracker, and an army of mice led by the mouse king fight the nutcracker and his toy soldiers. After winning the battle with some help from Clara, Clara and the nutcracker travel to the land of sweets where he

reveals himself to be a prince. The prince has his kingdom put on a show for Clara which includes an array of different dances. After the show, Clara awakes in her living room with the nutcracker still in her arms. In some versions of the ballet, Clara never wakes up and it is suggested that her dream wasn’t a dream at all, but rather that her uncle actually did perform magic on the nutcracker which allowed him to turn into a prince. The ballet has evolved and changed over time, but where did it start? The story of The Nutcracker was originally written as a book called “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King” in 1816 by E.T.A. Hoffmann, before Pyotr Tchaikovsky wrote the ballet in 1891. The ballet was first performed in December the year after it was written, and it was only a moderate success. Almost half a century later, the ballet was performed outside of Russia for the first time in England. Shortly after that, it came to America where it started to drum up popularity. In 1954, George Balanchine, the creator of The New York City Ballet and perhaps one of the most influential choreographers of all time, reworked The Nutcracker and turned it into a huge success. Out of all the different versions of The Nutcracker there has been since its initial release, this is the most popular version. After Balanchine’s production started being performed annually every holiday season, the ballet became the classic Christmas show that we know and love today.