It’s not officially the Christmas season until a production of the nutcracker is playing in your hometown, is it?
I’ll admit, I haven’t seen a production of the nutcracker since I was 9 years old, but as a young ballerina at the time, I remember how in awe I was at the effortless grace of all the performers as they seemed to float across the stage, portraying the powerful story without even the use of words.
Almost everyone knows about the nutcracker ballet, but what about its history? When did this famous ballet get its start and why?
The nutcracker Ballet was actually adapted from a short story written by the Prussian author E.T.A Hoffman. It was called The Nutcracker and the Mouse King and was published in Berlin in 1816.
The story follows the adventure of a young girl, Marie Stahlbaum, as her beloved Christmas toy, the nutcracker, magically comes to life and takes her away to a land whose inhabitants are life-like dolls.
It then took 76 years for the story to be made into the ballet we know today. The ballet debuted a week before Christmas in St. Petersburg in 1892 after it was commissioned just a year before by the director of Moscow’s Imperial Theatres.
The musical suite, written by Tchaikovsky, was instantly a success, but the ballet itself did not become quite as popular until the next century!
The ballet did not even reach North America until 1944 when it was performed by the San Francisco Ballet, and then it finally became a hit after George Balanchine’s version hit the stage in New York in 1954.
A fun fact about the music Tchaikovsky wrote for the ballet, he was challenged by a friend to write a melody with the notes of the scale in order, either ascending or descending, as long as they followed in sequence. Tchaikovsky did succeed in doing this, and you can hear it in the Grand pas de Deux of the second act where the main character Clara dances with the magical nutcracker.
Now that you know the history of this spectacular Christmas ballet, why not go see it with a new sense of appreciation at the Orpheum, presented by the renowned Vancouver Symphony Orchestra!
The show debuts on November 17th, so make sure to grab your tickets here and start the holiday season off right with an adventure through the classic story of the nutcracker.