WEBVTT - The Nutcracker 0:00:01.280 --> 0:00:04.280 Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production 0:00:04.360 --> 0:00:13.800 of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. 0:00:13.880 --> 0:00:18.360 I'm Tracy Vie Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. The Nutcracker 0:00:19.680 --> 0:00:23.599 has become such a huge tradition for so many people 0:00:23.640 --> 0:00:26.479 around Christmas. I know, for my own part, my mom 0:00:26.520 --> 0:00:28.680 and I went to the North Carolina School of the 0:00:28.800 --> 0:00:32.440 Arts production of The Nutcracker together for many, many years. 0:00:33.240 --> 0:00:35.239 We had a family friend a little older than me 0:00:35.440 --> 0:00:39.480 who went from being Clara as a child to being 0:00:39.560 --> 0:00:43.160 asked to come back and be the sugar Plum Ferry 0:00:43.240 --> 0:00:46.000 after she had gone on to continue her dance education 0:00:46.120 --> 0:00:49.920 in New York. For a whole lot of people, the 0:00:50.000 --> 0:00:53.640 Nutcracker is the first ballet they ever experienced, or maybe 0:00:53.680 --> 0:00:57.440 the only ballet they ever experience, and it's by far 0:00:58.240 --> 0:01:01.160 the biggest show and the I guest source of ticket 0:01:01.200 --> 0:01:05.959 revenue for a lot of ballet companies. And even if 0:01:05.959 --> 0:01:09.600 you have never experienced this whole ballet music from The 0:01:09.680 --> 0:01:13.560 Nutcracker has also become a huge part not just of 0:01:13.600 --> 0:01:16.880 the Christmas season, but also beyond it. Like I can 0:01:16.959 --> 0:01:22.280 even remember a commercial from the nineteen eighties that set 0:01:22.360 --> 0:01:26.720 a smurfberry crunch jingle to the march from Act one. 0:01:28.160 --> 0:01:32.680 I will maybe sing that in our behind the scenes, Okay, 0:01:32.720 --> 0:01:37.080 I will try to remember that you just said that. Uh. 0:01:37.319 --> 0:01:40.399 It's a little odd when you think about it, that 0:01:40.560 --> 0:01:45.160 the Nutcracker ballet has become such a phenomenon, particularly in 0:01:45.240 --> 0:01:49.160 North America, but it's also spread to other places too, 0:01:49.880 --> 0:01:53.760 considering that it is a Russian adaptation of a German 0:01:53.960 --> 0:01:57.680 story that was never really a Christmas staple in its 0:01:57.720 --> 0:02:00.760 home country. Um So that is the story that we're 0:02:00.760 --> 0:02:04.520 going to tell on the show today. The ballet The 0:02:04.600 --> 0:02:08.960 Nutcracker is based on the eighteen sixteen story The Nutcracker 0:02:09.000 --> 0:02:13.680 and the Mouse King by Ernst Theodore Amadeus Hoffman or E. T. A. Hoffman. 0:02:14.400 --> 0:02:17.000 His name at birth was actually Earnst Theodore ville Helm, 0:02:17.120 --> 0:02:20.440 but he changed wille Helm to Amadeus out of admiration 0:02:20.520 --> 0:02:24.639 for those gang Amadeus Mozart Hoffman was born in seventeen 0:02:24.639 --> 0:02:29.200 seventy six and Khonugsburg, Prussia now Kaliningrad, Russia. Although he 0:02:29.280 --> 0:02:32.360 spent most of his adult life in what is now Germany, 0:02:32.639 --> 0:02:35.720 Hoffman wore a lot of hats. He trained as a lawyer, 0:02:35.919 --> 0:02:39.240 and served as a law officer before turning his attention 0:02:39.280 --> 0:02:42.600 to music. He worked as a composer and a music critic. 0:02:42.960 --> 0:02:46.320 He was also an artist, a theater director, and a writer, 0:02:46.680 --> 0:02:49.600 and his written work included a lot of fairy tales, 0:02:49.680 --> 0:02:53.720 including works for children. His fiction tended to be pretty 0:02:53.760 --> 0:02:57.040 haunting and strange, with stories that carried a whole sense 0:02:57.080 --> 0:03:00.880 of ambiguity. They blurred the lime, are toyed with the 0:03:00.919 --> 0:03:05.480 relationships between imagination and reality, and this included his work 0:03:05.560 --> 0:03:08.680 for young readers, even though a lot of children's literature 0:03:08.720 --> 0:03:12.360 at that point tended to focus more on more heavy 0:03:12.440 --> 0:03:16.800 handed didactic stories and morality tales. Up that wasn't the 0:03:16.880 --> 0:03:20.359 only stuff being published, but a lot of it was very, 0:03:20.560 --> 0:03:24.880 very moralizing. The Nutcracker and the Mouse King is sometimes 0:03:24.919 --> 0:03:29.280 described as the first fantasy written specifically for children. The 0:03:29.360 --> 0:03:33.280 story contains fourteen short chapter, some of which just stop 0:03:33.440 --> 0:03:36.400 rather than reaching any sort of logical pause in the narrative. 0:03:37.320 --> 0:03:39.760 There is some speculation that it was broken up this 0:03:39.800 --> 0:03:42.360 way so that it could be read one chapter per night, 0:03:42.520 --> 0:03:45.960 starting on Christmas Eve as the story does, and ending 0:03:46.000 --> 0:03:49.680 with Epiphany on January six, so parts of the story 0:03:49.880 --> 0:03:53.280 will be familiar to anyone who has seen The Nutcracker ballet. 0:03:54.120 --> 0:03:56.880 The main character is a seven year old girl, although 0:03:56.920 --> 0:04:00.160 her name is Maurice Stalbaumb, not Clara Silber, how us, 0:04:00.200 --> 0:04:02.440 as it is in a lot of productions of The Nutcracker. 0:04:03.040 --> 0:04:06.280 She has a younger brother, Fritz, and an older sister, Louise, 0:04:06.440 --> 0:04:08.800 although Louise does not play a big part in the story. 0:04:09.640 --> 0:04:14.280 Their godfather, Drosselmeyer, is both beloved and a little frightening. 0:04:14.600 --> 0:04:17.560 He is old and mysterious and wears an eye patch, 0:04:18.040 --> 0:04:21.520 and he arrives on Christmas Eve with gifts for the family. 0:04:22.560 --> 0:04:26.120 One of those gifts is an ingenious clockwork palace, but 0:04:26.200 --> 0:04:30.359 the children, especially Fritz, are quickly bored of it. The 0:04:30.400 --> 0:04:33.160 clockwork figures just do the same thing over and over. 0:04:34.200 --> 0:04:38.320 Then Marie finds a nutcracker among the other Christmas gifts. 0:04:39.080 --> 0:04:42.400 Basic tools made to crack nuts have existed at least 0:04:42.520 --> 0:04:46.880 since the fourteenth century, but carved wooden nutcracker dolls, typically 0:04:46.880 --> 0:04:50.159 made to look like soldiers, started to become popular in 0:04:50.240 --> 0:04:54.679 seventeenth century Germany. In the story, the Nutcracker is meant 0:04:54.760 --> 0:04:58.280 as a gift for everyone, but Marie is particularly taken 0:04:58.279 --> 0:05:01.680 with it and deep upset when her brother breaks it 0:05:01.720 --> 0:05:03.839 by forcing it to crack a nut that is much 0:05:03.880 --> 0:05:08.279 too big. Marie tries to bind up the Nutcracker's injury 0:05:08.320 --> 0:05:11.760 with a ribbon, and Drosselmeyer does a more thorough repair. 0:05:11.839 --> 0:05:15.800 Later on that night, Marie puts the Nutcracker to bed, 0:05:16.080 --> 0:05:19.159 and that's where the name Clara comes in. Clara is 0:05:19.200 --> 0:05:23.479 Marie's new doll, and Marie commandeer's Clara's dollbed so that 0:05:23.520 --> 0:05:27.960 the Nutcracker will have a comfortable place to recuperate. As 0:05:28.040 --> 0:05:31.000 she is checking on the Nutcracker late at night, Marie 0:05:31.120 --> 0:05:34.359 sees the mouse King and his army preparing for a 0:05:34.360 --> 0:05:38.279 war against her brother's toy soldiers, who have all come alive. 0:05:39.240 --> 0:05:42.159 The doll Clara saves the Nutcracker when he tries to 0:05:42.240 --> 0:05:44.840 make a foolhardy leap from the top of a high 0:05:44.839 --> 0:05:49.240 shelf to join in the fray. Marie also sees Drosselmeyer 0:05:49.600 --> 0:05:51.960 on top of the Grandfather Clock in place of the 0:05:52.000 --> 0:05:55.320 owl that is normally there, although he does not intervene 0:05:55.360 --> 0:05:58.160 in the fight with the mice. After hitting the mouse 0:05:58.240 --> 0:06:01.680 king with her shoe, Maurice wounds and later wakes up 0:06:01.680 --> 0:06:04.039 in her own bed. So a lot of what we 0:06:04.080 --> 0:06:07.120 have just said follows a lot of the action of 0:06:07.200 --> 0:06:11.040 Act one in most productions of The Nutcracker, So if 0:06:11.040 --> 0:06:15.599 you've seen The Nutcrackers, probably pretty familiar. But then Hoffmann's story. 0:06:16.080 --> 0:06:18.799 Marie cuts her arm on a piece of broken glass 0:06:18.920 --> 0:06:21.880 during this battle, and when drossell Meyer comes to visit 0:06:21.920 --> 0:06:25.560 her during her recovery, he tells her a story, one 0:06:25.640 --> 0:06:30.240 involving a royal clockmaker also named drossell Meyer, and the 0:06:30.400 --> 0:06:34.479 story within a story. Clockmaker drossell Meyer served a king 0:06:34.520 --> 0:06:38.160 and queen who had a beautiful baby daughter, Princess Perlapat. 0:06:39.000 --> 0:06:42.760 The queen was preparing fat to make sausages or puddings, 0:06:42.760 --> 0:06:46.560 which were the king's favorite dish, when Lady mouse Rank, 0:06:46.600 --> 0:06:49.240 who's basically the queen of the mice, asked her for 0:06:49.320 --> 0:06:52.680 some of it. The queen obliged, but then Lady mouse 0:06:52.760 --> 0:06:54.599 Rank and her kin ate so much of the fact 0:06:54.640 --> 0:06:57.440 that there was not enough left for the king's puddings. 0:06:58.320 --> 0:07:02.520 The king was furious, and drossell Meyer, the clockmaker, decided 0:07:02.560 --> 0:07:05.240 to use his ingenuity to build traps to get rid 0:07:05.279 --> 0:07:08.360 of all the mice. Lady mouse Rank, of course, did 0:07:08.360 --> 0:07:11.160 not appreciate that so many of her kin were killed 0:07:11.160 --> 0:07:14.360 in the royal family's new mouse traps, so she cursed 0:07:14.400 --> 0:07:18.200 Princess Pearl a Pat with ugliness. After consulting with the 0:07:18.320 --> 0:07:21.920 royal astrologer, Drosselmeyer determined that Princess Pearl La Pat could 0:07:21.960 --> 0:07:26.080 only be cured with a supernaturally hard krakatuck nut cracked 0:07:26.120 --> 0:07:29.000 open and presented to her by a young man who 0:07:29.040 --> 0:07:33.880 had never been shaved and never worn boots. After years 0:07:33.960 --> 0:07:38.400 and years of searching, Drosselmeyer finally found a krakatuck nut 0:07:39.120 --> 0:07:43.600 in possession of his brother in Nuremberg and his brother's son, 0:07:43.840 --> 0:07:46.960 so his nephew turned out to have never been shaved 0:07:47.040 --> 0:07:50.800 and never worn boots. Uncle and nephew returned to the 0:07:50.840 --> 0:07:53.880 palace with the nut, where a long line of potential 0:07:53.960 --> 0:07:57.559 suitors lined up to try to bite it open. All 0:07:57.640 --> 0:08:01.280 of them failed until the younger draw ussell Meyer that nephew, 0:08:01.400 --> 0:08:05.240 the last in line, succeeded, but the young drossell Meyer 0:08:05.360 --> 0:08:08.200 and Princess Pear La Pat did not live happily ever after. 0:08:09.000 --> 0:08:12.360 Just after breaking the curse on the princess, the clockmaker's 0:08:12.400 --> 0:08:17.360 nephew accidentally stepped on Lady mouse Rink, killing her with 0:08:17.400 --> 0:08:21.520 her dying breath. Lady Mousehrink curse him, transforming him into 0:08:21.560 --> 0:08:26.480 a Nutcracker. Princess pear La, pat horrified banished the Nutcracker 0:08:26.600 --> 0:08:30.320 and his uncle, the Clockmaker. The Royal Astronomer, who was 0:08:30.360 --> 0:08:33.599 also exiled for his role in all of this, predicted 0:08:33.640 --> 0:08:36.920 that the Nutcracker's curse would be lifted only if someone 0:08:37.000 --> 0:08:40.360 fell in love with him. Of course, at this point, Marie, 0:08:40.600 --> 0:08:44.160 hearing this story, concludes that it is real that her 0:08:44.240 --> 0:08:49.320 beloved Nutcracker toy is really the transmogrified nephew of the 0:08:49.440 --> 0:08:53.679 Royal Clockmaker, and that Royal Clockmaker is none other than 0:08:53.760 --> 0:08:58.840 her godfather, Drosselmeyer. Marie demands to know why drossell Meyer 0:08:59.000 --> 0:09:01.839 is not helping his nephew, after all, she saw him 0:09:01.960 --> 0:09:04.200 right there on the clock on the night that the 0:09:04.280 --> 0:09:08.240 Nutcracker fought the mouse King. Once Marie has deduced what's 0:09:08.280 --> 0:09:12.160 going on, the mouse King starts demanding tribute, eating his 0:09:12.240 --> 0:09:15.640 way through all her treats and toys. Then one day 0:09:15.720 --> 0:09:18.760 she notices that the Nutcracker has a spot of blood 0:09:18.800 --> 0:09:22.080 on his neck. As she's cleaning it off, he asks 0:09:22.120 --> 0:09:24.800 for a sword. She gives it to him, and he 0:09:24.960 --> 0:09:28.160 is finally victorious in his fight against the mouse King, 0:09:28.640 --> 0:09:32.320 cutting off the mouse king seven heads and presenting Marie 0:09:32.480 --> 0:09:36.720 with seven little crowns. The Nutcracker takes Marie to a 0:09:36.800 --> 0:09:41.040 magical kingdom with meadows made of candy, a lemonade river, 0:09:41.200 --> 0:09:45.079 and towns made of gingerbread and bond bonds. She soon 0:09:45.520 --> 0:09:49.480 learns that the Nutcracker is the Prince of Comfort Turemburg, 0:09:49.720 --> 0:09:53.360 or the Kingdom of Sweets. Marie once again wakes up 0:09:53.360 --> 0:09:55.200 in her own bed, and when she tries to tell 0:09:55.200 --> 0:09:59.200 her family what has happened, they are dismissive, but soon 0:09:59.400 --> 0:10:03.440 her god father, Drossell Meyer's young nephew arrives from Nuremberg. 0:10:04.040 --> 0:10:07.319 The nephew thanks Marie for saving him, and he proposes. 0:10:08.040 --> 0:10:10.640 A year and a day later, Marie and the younger 0:10:10.720 --> 0:10:14.000 Drossell Meyer Mary and from there Rain is King and 0:10:14.080 --> 0:10:18.400 Queen of the Kingdom of Sweets. This whole story is 0:10:18.480 --> 0:10:22.959 twisting and layered. It folds back on itself at various points. 0:10:23.679 --> 0:10:27.280 Marie often tells her parents what she's experienced and seen, 0:10:27.480 --> 0:10:30.800 only for them to blame her fevered mind and order 0:10:30.880 --> 0:10:34.960 her to stop telling such wild tales. As her godfather 0:10:35.040 --> 0:10:39.080 Drosselmeyer tells her this story, he also suggests that it's real, 0:10:39.200 --> 0:10:42.400 but then when he talks to her parents, he dismisses 0:10:42.440 --> 0:10:46.280 what she's saying as fancy. As one example, he tells 0:10:46.280 --> 0:10:48.960 her parents that the mouse King's seven crowns are a 0:10:48.960 --> 0:10:52.320 gift that he gave her years before, certainly not something 0:10:52.480 --> 0:10:57.720 belonging to a seven headed mouse king gas lighting. The 0:10:57.840 --> 0:11:01.440 book's tone is fairly ominous, actually, and it draws heavily 0:11:01.480 --> 0:11:05.360 from German romanticism. The brothers grim and They're dark and 0:11:05.440 --> 0:11:08.800 sometimes grewesome collections of fairy tales date from around this 0:11:08.920 --> 0:11:13.520 same time. Past podcast subject Casper David Friedrich was another 0:11:13.640 --> 0:11:17.280 of Hoffmann's contemporaries, and many of his landscapes have a 0:11:17.400 --> 0:11:22.840 similarly eerie and foreboding, although still very beautiful feel. But 0:11:22.920 --> 0:11:26.599 in eighteen forty four, more than twenty years after e 0:11:26.720 --> 0:11:30.719 t A. Hoffman's death, past podcast subject Alexandre do my 0:11:30.920 --> 0:11:34.319 Pair adapted The Nutcracker and the Mouse King and translated 0:11:34.400 --> 0:11:38.319 into French. The resulting book had the same basic plot 0:11:38.360 --> 0:11:40.880 and the same sort of story within a story, but 0:11:41.000 --> 0:11:43.680 with a tone that was generally a lot lighter and 0:11:43.720 --> 0:11:46.520 more cheerful than the original. And it is this version 0:11:46.720 --> 0:11:50.120 that was adapted into a ballet, or at least part 0:11:50.160 --> 0:11:52.400 of it was. We're going to talk more about that 0:11:52.520 --> 0:12:05.640 after a sponsor break. Pyotr Iliot Chikovsky was born in 0:12:05.720 --> 0:12:09.079 Russia in eighteen forty and he started composing music by 0:12:09.120 --> 0:12:11.959 the age of four and taking piano lessons at five. 0:12:12.720 --> 0:12:15.800 But Russia didn't have a formal system of education for 0:12:15.960 --> 0:12:19.320 musicians and composers yet, so it did not occur to 0:12:19.360 --> 0:12:21.480 his parents at first that this could be a career 0:12:21.600 --> 0:12:24.960 for him, so they focused his education on the idea 0:12:25.000 --> 0:12:28.800 that he would become a civil servant. That eventually changed, though. 0:12:29.000 --> 0:12:31.520 He became one of the first students at the St. 0:12:31.520 --> 0:12:35.400 Petersburg Conservatory after it was established in eighteen sixty two, 0:12:35.920 --> 0:12:39.800 and he eventually became famous both within and outside of Russia, 0:12:39.920 --> 0:12:46.239 composing seven symphonies, eleven operas and various concertos, cantatas, quartets, 0:12:46.440 --> 0:12:51.680 choral works, and three ballets Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty 0:12:51.800 --> 0:12:54.880 and The Nutcracker. And the Nutcracker ballet was part of 0:12:54.920 --> 0:12:59.000 a two part commission from Russia's Imperial Theaters in St. Petersburg. 0:12:59.400 --> 0:13:03.080 The other being a one act opera. The ballet was 0:13:03.120 --> 0:13:06.800 his second collaboration to include both Imperial Theaters director Ivan 0:13:06.880 --> 0:13:11.640 Vassevlowski and French choreographer Marius Petepa, chief choreographer of the 0:13:11.679 --> 0:13:15.560 Imperial Ballet. The three men had previously worked together on 0:13:15.640 --> 0:13:19.160 The Sleeping Beauty, with Zevlowski commissioning the work, writing the 0:13:19.240 --> 0:13:22.640 libretto and being heavily involved in the costume and set design, 0:13:22.960 --> 0:13:27.400 and Petepa choreographing the ballet and providing detailed instructions to 0:13:27.559 --> 0:13:31.000 Chukovsky on the music. The Sleeping Beauty had been a 0:13:31.040 --> 0:13:34.960 success after opening at the Marinsky Theater in St. Petersburg 0:13:35.080 --> 0:13:40.160 in eighteen nine, and Vesvelovski was hoping for something similar 0:13:40.200 --> 0:13:43.600 to happen with The Nutcracker. The Nutcracker and the Mouse 0:13:43.720 --> 0:13:47.560 King had become a well known and widely read children's story, 0:13:47.720 --> 0:13:50.960 and he chose Alexandre Duma's adaptation of it as the 0:13:51.000 --> 0:13:55.559 ballet's starting point. Even though classical ballet does not typically 0:13:55.640 --> 0:13:59.400 include spoken language or narration, by the nineteenth century, the 0:13:59.440 --> 0:14:03.079 process of creating a ballet generally started still with a libretto, 0:14:03.120 --> 0:14:05.839 a written narrative laying out the story that the ballet 0:14:05.920 --> 0:14:10.679 would tell the composer, choreographer, set designer, and costume designer. 0:14:10.760 --> 0:14:14.640 Basically everyone who worked on creating the ballet would rely 0:14:14.800 --> 0:14:18.000 on this libretto to translate the story for the stage. 0:14:18.520 --> 0:14:23.640 The Nutcrackers libretto is generally credited to both Velowski and Petipa, 0:14:23.720 --> 0:14:26.560 although it is not entirely clear who did what in 0:14:26.640 --> 0:14:31.360 preparing it. But the Nutcracker collaboration among these men did 0:14:31.400 --> 0:14:33.680 not seem to have gone as well as it did 0:14:33.760 --> 0:14:39.000 with The Sleeping Beauty. With both ballets, Petapa provided Tchaikovsky 0:14:39.120 --> 0:14:43.320 with detailed instructions about the type of music that was needed, 0:14:43.360 --> 0:14:46.320 as in the full ballet was broken down into its 0:14:46.320 --> 0:14:51.440 scenes and dances and variations, with Petepa giving very precise 0:14:51.480 --> 0:14:54.960 instructions about how many measures of what kind of music 0:14:55.080 --> 0:14:57.960 was needed for each of them. It reads almost like 0:14:58.000 --> 0:15:02.520 a shopping list. But in The Sleeping Beauty, these notes 0:15:02.600 --> 0:15:05.440 and the libretto they had added up to a story 0:15:05.520 --> 0:15:09.600 that had deeper themes which Chakovsky could explore through musical 0:15:09.680 --> 0:15:14.120 devices like lip botifs. These represented aspects of the story 0:15:14.160 --> 0:15:18.240 while also unifying the ballet. In addition to the story 0:15:18.320 --> 0:15:21.600 of Princess Arora. The Sleeping Beauty also dealt with themes 0:15:21.640 --> 0:15:25.720 of good versus evil, and Tchaikovsky could just explore all 0:15:25.760 --> 0:15:29.760 of this and represent it through music. Meanwhile, the libretto 0:15:29.840 --> 0:15:33.600 for The Nutcracker had abandoned the deeper themes and ambiguities 0:15:33.640 --> 0:15:37.880 of Hoffmann's story. The entire middle portion of The Nutcracker 0:15:37.880 --> 0:15:41.160 and the Mouse King had been cut almost entirely, leaving 0:15:41.160 --> 0:15:45.800 only the Christmas party, Drossmeyer bringing gifts, the battle between 0:15:45.800 --> 0:15:48.080 the Nutcracker and the Mouse King, and the voyage to 0:15:48.120 --> 0:15:52.000 the Kingdom of Sweets after a grand final waltz. The 0:15:52.080 --> 0:15:55.440 Nutcracker was to end with an apotheosis with a bee 0:15:55.480 --> 0:15:59.920 hive surrounded by bees. The main character, now named Clara, 0:16:00.080 --> 0:16:02.720 did not return home after her travels through the Kingdom 0:16:02.720 --> 0:16:05.880 of Sweets, so it really wasn't even clear what the 0:16:05.920 --> 0:16:10.240 point of it all was. On top of his creative dissatisfaction, 0:16:10.440 --> 0:16:15.240 Tchaikovsky experienced depression and anxiety throughout his life, along with 0:16:15.320 --> 0:16:18.680 social pressures and taboos stemming from his attraction to other 0:16:18.760 --> 0:16:22.080 men at a time when homosexuality was both illegal and 0:16:22.320 --> 0:16:25.960 deeply stigmatized, and all of this may have fed into 0:16:26.000 --> 0:16:30.160 his struggle to get started on the Nutcracker. In April 0:16:30.200 --> 0:16:34.200 of eight he wrote to Zevlovsky about it, saying, quote 0:16:34.280 --> 0:16:38.840 here in Rouen, I had to call on extraordinary willpower 0:16:39.120 --> 0:16:42.760 to make an agonizing effort in order to work. As 0:16:42.800 --> 0:16:47.440 a result, what comes out is colorless, dry, hasty, and wretched. 0:16:48.120 --> 0:16:51.440 The awareness that things are not going well torments me 0:16:51.880 --> 0:16:55.800 and agonizes me to the point of sickness. A consuming 0:16:55.880 --> 0:16:59.840 depression constantly gnaws at my heart, and I have not 0:17:00.080 --> 0:17:04.040 for a long time felt as unhappy as now. The 0:17:04.160 --> 0:17:07.919 day after Chaikovsky wrote this letter, he learned by reading 0:17:07.960 --> 0:17:11.440 it in a newspaper that his sister Alexandra had died. 0:17:12.080 --> 0:17:14.320 He was at that moment on the way to board 0:17:14.320 --> 0:17:16.760 a ship for a tour of the United States, where 0:17:16.800 --> 0:17:20.359 he would, among other things, conduct music he had composed 0:17:20.400 --> 0:17:23.879 at the grand opening of Carnegie Hall. This would have 0:17:23.920 --> 0:17:28.600 been terrible in any circumstance, but this was particularly terrible timing. 0:17:28.840 --> 0:17:32.080 But Chikovsky did not cancel his tour or his appearances 0:17:32.080 --> 0:17:35.240 in the United States. Insaid it seems as though he 0:17:35.280 --> 0:17:38.800 took this transatlantic voyage as a time to contemplate and 0:17:38.840 --> 0:17:43.439 to refocus. Music historians and theorists have noted that The 0:17:43.560 --> 0:17:48.919 Nutcracker incorporates more borrowed folk melodies and existing musical themes 0:17:48.920 --> 0:17:52.040 than most of his other work does, kind of suggesting 0:17:52.080 --> 0:17:55.360 that once he did finally get underway, he still had 0:17:55.440 --> 0:17:59.440 trouble feeling creative. There's also some suggestion that the character 0:17:59.520 --> 0:18:02.159 of the sugar plumb Ferry is meant to embody his 0:18:02.320 --> 0:18:05.120 late sister. He was known to the family as Sasha. 0:18:05.800 --> 0:18:08.639 Chakovsky may not have been the only person who was 0:18:08.760 --> 0:18:12.919 facing very real creative trouble with The Nutcracker. Although Marius 0:18:12.960 --> 0:18:15.760 Petipa had been the one to write Chaikovsky's instructions for 0:18:15.840 --> 0:18:19.560 the music and initial notations for the choreography, he did 0:18:19.640 --> 0:18:23.560 not choreographed most of the ballet. He became ill shortly 0:18:23.600 --> 0:18:25.720 after that work began, and he left most of it 0:18:25.840 --> 0:18:30.720 to his assistant lev Ivanov. According to Petipa's memoirs, Ivanov 0:18:30.840 --> 0:18:35.000 did all the staging and choreographed all the dances. Pettipa 0:18:35.160 --> 0:18:37.399 was seventy three when this happened, but there is some 0:18:37.560 --> 0:18:41.000 speculation that he really wasn't all that sick, and he 0:18:41.200 --> 0:18:43.840 just kind of didn't want to work on this nonsensical show. 0:18:44.560 --> 0:18:48.600 Evenov worked from Petipa's notes, but he didn't always follow them. 0:18:49.560 --> 0:18:52.960 For example, in Act two, Pettypa called for a quote 0:18:53.119 --> 0:18:55.680 tray pack for the end of the dance turning on 0:18:55.760 --> 0:18:59.439 the floor. Tray Pack is a folk dance from Ukraine 0:18:59.440 --> 0:19:02.639 and Russia. But even If took this piece in a 0:19:02.840 --> 0:19:08.120 totally different direction using hoops and lead dancer Alexander Shiev 0:19:08.440 --> 0:19:13.000 choreographed his part himself. This is why in some productions 0:19:13.040 --> 0:19:16.320 of The Nutcracker to day Trepak is this intensely athletic 0:19:16.400 --> 0:19:18.719 dance full of leaping and squatting and dancers that are 0:19:18.800 --> 0:19:22.000 dressed as like peasants or maybe cossacks well and others 0:19:22.160 --> 0:19:25.560 they are in candy stripes and dancing with hoops. If 0:19:25.600 --> 0:19:28.040 you've only seen the first version, the first time you've 0:19:28.080 --> 0:19:33.080 seen the second one, you might feel like it was 0:19:33.119 --> 0:19:38.920 a rip off. Um yeah. Chakowski compiled and Nutcracker suite 0:19:39.040 --> 0:19:42.359 featuring selections from the ballet, which was first performed in 0:19:42.560 --> 0:19:45.600 March of eight and the full ballet premiered at the 0:19:45.640 --> 0:19:49.120 marian Ski Theater in St. Petersburg, Russia on December eighteenth 0:19:49.200 --> 0:19:53.000 of that year or December six under the old style calendar. 0:19:53.800 --> 0:19:57.440 It followed Chakovsky's one act opera Yolanta, which had also 0:19:57.560 --> 0:20:00.480 been the other part of this commission. One of the 0:20:00.560 --> 0:20:03.720 criticisms of Chaikovsky's work during his lifetime was that it 0:20:03.840 --> 0:20:08.040 was not Russian enough, but The Nutcracker includes several elements 0:20:08.080 --> 0:20:10.880 that are really hallmarks of this period of Russian theater 0:20:11.040 --> 0:20:14.680 and ballet. This is really considered to be Russian ballet's 0:20:14.800 --> 0:20:18.879 golden age. Zar Alexander the Third was a patron of 0:20:18.960 --> 0:20:21.000 the arts and the theater, and a lot of the 0:20:21.040 --> 0:20:24.800 work that was created during his reign involved dramatic sets 0:20:24.880 --> 0:20:28.399 and costumes and the sorts of spectacles that these are 0:20:28.640 --> 0:20:32.240 generally enjoyed. Much of the second act of The Nutcracker 0:20:32.440 --> 0:20:36.240 is also essentially a court celebration, with Clara as a 0:20:36.359 --> 0:20:38.879 guest to the Kingdom of sweets being presented with a 0:20:38.960 --> 0:20:42.440 pageant of all of the Kingdom's best and brightest, and 0:20:42.560 --> 0:20:45.960 some of this court review highlights Russia in its presentation, 0:20:46.320 --> 0:20:50.760 especially the series of Spanish, Chinese, Arabian and Russian dances 0:20:50.880 --> 0:20:55.119 also known as Chocolate Tea Coffee trip Ack, especially in 0:20:55.160 --> 0:20:58.800 Petipa's original notations. Tripp K was to be the show stopper, 0:20:59.240 --> 0:21:03.600 suggesting the Russia was the best among nations. These dances 0:21:03.720 --> 0:21:06.480 combine with others in Act two to suggest the idea 0:21:06.560 --> 0:21:10.560 of many nations living together harmoniously under the rule of 0:21:10.680 --> 0:21:14.439 one benevolent monarch, that is the sugar Plum Ferry along 0:21:14.520 --> 0:21:19.040 with her Prince. Article in the journal Dance Research by 0:21:19.119 --> 0:21:22.760 Damien Mayer also explores the idea that the use of 0:21:22.840 --> 0:21:26.240 French songs and costumes inspired by fashion of the French 0:21:26.280 --> 0:21:30.479 Revolutionary era allude to the alliance between France and Russia 0:21:30.560 --> 0:21:34.680 that developed in the eighteen nineties. And Zar Alexander the 0:21:34.800 --> 0:21:38.560 Third does seem to have liked this ballet. Chaikovsky wrote 0:21:38.560 --> 0:21:41.280 a letter to his brother saying that the Czar quote 0:21:41.400 --> 0:21:44.159 was delighted and sent for me to his box and 0:21:44.280 --> 0:21:48.119 said a whole lot of kind words. I love that. 0:21:48.280 --> 0:21:50.399 A whole lot of kind words is just a great 0:21:50.960 --> 0:21:55.399 turn of phrase. But as for everybody else, reviews a 0:21:55.440 --> 0:21:59.280 little bit mixed, and the bad reviews were often explicitly 0:21:59.400 --> 0:22:03.119 and pointedly bad. People pointed out the same aspects of 0:22:03.160 --> 0:22:06.720 the libretto that had caused Tchaikovsky so much frustration, including 0:22:06.760 --> 0:22:10.040 the fact that Act one and Act two almost felt 0:22:10.080 --> 0:22:12.960 like two totally different ballets, neither of which made a 0:22:13.000 --> 0:22:16.239 whole lot of sense. Some critics insisted that Act one 0:22:16.400 --> 0:22:19.440 was barely a ballet at all. People mostly stood around 0:22:19.480 --> 0:22:23.480 and pantomimed. In the words of one critic, quote, first 0:22:23.560 --> 0:22:26.640 of all, the Nutcracker can under no condition be called 0:22:26.680 --> 0:22:29.800 a ballet. It does not satisfy even one of the 0:22:29.880 --> 0:22:33.560 demands of a ballet. Ballet, as a basic genre of art, 0:22:33.720 --> 0:22:37.800 is mimed drama, and consequently must contain all the elements 0:22:37.960 --> 0:22:41.119 of norm drama. On the other hand, there must be 0:22:41.240 --> 0:22:45.120 a place in ballet for plastic attitudes and dances made 0:22:45.200 --> 0:22:49.159 up of the entire essence of classical choreography. There's nothing 0:22:49.359 --> 0:22:52.639 of this in The Nutcracker. There is not even a subject. 0:22:53.240 --> 0:22:56.720 And also, the stage was full of children. At this 0:22:56.840 --> 0:22:59.840 point in Russian ballet history, younger ballet students did not 0:23:00.240 --> 0:23:04.119 usually shared the stage with older teens and adults. Reviewers 0:23:04.200 --> 0:23:06.560 bemoaned the fact that this ballet seemed to have been 0:23:06.640 --> 0:23:10.920 made by children for children. To add to that, many 0:23:11.000 --> 0:23:13.280 of the boys in it were not dance students at all. 0:23:13.480 --> 0:23:17.359 They had been recruited from a military academy. The focus 0:23:17.440 --> 0:23:20.399 on children and the ballet's first act also meant that 0:23:20.520 --> 0:23:24.520 the most striking balletic performances done by the company's most 0:23:24.640 --> 0:23:28.800 prominent dancers didn't happen until very late in the evening 0:23:29.400 --> 0:23:33.040 in Act two, And because the Nutcracker followed this other 0:23:33.240 --> 0:23:35.919 one act opera, that meant that they got on stage 0:23:36.200 --> 0:23:39.359 very very late. People felt like they had watched a 0:23:39.480 --> 0:23:42.040 whole opera and then a bunch of kids running around 0:23:42.080 --> 0:23:44.920 for an hour before the real ballet even started, and 0:23:45.040 --> 0:23:49.280 then that ballet was over with no real resolution. Overall, though, 0:23:49.400 --> 0:23:53.159 Chaikowsky's score was praised, although sometimes that praise was a 0:23:53.200 --> 0:23:56.920 little bit backhanded, as in quote in some it's a 0:23:56.960 --> 0:24:00.560 pity that so much good music is expended on such nonsense, 0:24:00.760 --> 0:24:04.960 so unworthy of attention, But the music in general is excellent. 0:24:05.840 --> 0:24:09.119 Tchaikowski clearly had huge trouble getting started and found the 0:24:09.160 --> 0:24:12.280 early work on the ballet incredibly difficult, but it does 0:24:12.320 --> 0:24:14.640 seem that he was pleased enough with the score once 0:24:14.680 --> 0:24:17.680 he was actually done with it. One thing to note 0:24:17.760 --> 0:24:20.880 here is that we don't actually have the choreography from 0:24:20.880 --> 0:24:26.440 the Nutcrackers debut performances. Pedopies instructions to Chaikovsky have survived 0:24:26.560 --> 0:24:29.359 along with his notes and the libretto, but the oldest 0:24:29.520 --> 0:24:33.960 surviving set of more complete comprehensive notes was not written 0:24:34.000 --> 0:24:36.640 down until a few years later, so it's not really 0:24:36.760 --> 0:24:40.280 clear whether any of the criticisms of the dancing itself 0:24:40.480 --> 0:24:45.440 led the choreography to evolve over the Marinski Theaters to 0:24:45.600 --> 0:24:48.960 ninety three ballet season once that season was over, though 0:24:49.080 --> 0:24:52.200 it does not appear that major changes were made to 0:24:52.240 --> 0:24:56.160 the Nutcracker until after the Russian Revolution. While the ballet's 0:24:56.240 --> 0:24:59.640 reception was mixed to poor, its music became far more 0:24:59.720 --> 0:25:04.200 pop puler, particularly the Nutcracker Sweet. Orchestras in Europe and 0:25:04.280 --> 0:25:07.320 North America started performing the Nutcracker Sweet in the early 0:25:07.440 --> 0:25:11.040 to mid eighteen nineties, and it became widely recognizable on 0:25:11.200 --> 0:25:15.040 both sides of the Atlantic. It wasn't until decades later 0:25:15.280 --> 0:25:19.600 that the Nutcracker became a winter holiday tradition, though you 0:25:19.680 --> 0:25:31.480