SYMHC Classics: Nutcracker

Summary

Podcast Summary: Stuff You Missed in History Class — SYMHC Classics: Nutcracker

Hosts: Tracy V. Wilson and Holly Frey
Release Date: December 6, 2025 (original episode December 13, 2021)
Theme: The fascinating, layered history of The Nutcracker — from its literary roots through its complex journey to becoming a ubiquitous holiday tradition.

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into the origins and legacy of The Nutcracker ballet, unpacking its sprawling history from a dark German fairy tale to a cornerstone of the American holiday season. Tracy and Holly trace the evolution of the tale, its transformation into ballet, Tchaikovsky’s struggles and triumphs in composing its iconic score, and how this work, originally not a celebrated classic, grew into a festive phenomenon — with all its controversies and adaptations.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Nutcracker's Enduring Legacy

• Main Point: The Nutcracker is deeply linked with Christmas in North America but began as a Russian ballet adapted from a German story, and was not originally a Christmas staple in Russia or Germany.
• Music from The Nutcracker is omnipresent, even in pop culture (ex: 1980s Smurfberry Crunch jingle parody) — [03:41].

2. Origins: Hoffman's Dark Fantasy

• Source Material: 1816's The Nutcracker and the Mouse King by E.T.A. Hoffmann — a fantastical, often eerie children's story noted for its blurred lines between imagination and reality.

• Hoffmann's background: lawyer, composer, music critic, artist, theater director, and writer — exemplifies Romantic-era fascination with the eerie and ambiguous [04:39–05:58].

• The original protagonist is Marie, not Clara; several plot differences from the ballet, including the "story within a story" fairy tale about a cursed princess and a magical nut — [06:24–12:52].

  “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King is sometimes described as the first fantasy written specifically for children.” — Holly [05:58]

• Themes: Subtle, unsettling mood and ambiguity; Marie is often dismissed by adults who blame her 'fevered imagination,' with elements of gaslighting and foreboding [12:52–13:58].

3. Dumas' Adaptation and Lightening the Tone

• In 1844, Alexandre Dumas adapted Hoffmann’s tale, giving it a lighter and more cheerful character — this would become the version used for the ballet libretto [13:58–14:25].

4. Tchaikovsky and the Ballet's Turbulent Creation

• Composer: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, commissioned for the ballet by Russia’s Imperial Theatres.

• The ballet was based on Dumas’ adaptation, but the process was creatively fraught. Choreographer Marius Petipa provided extremely detailed, limiting instructions, unlike the more thematic Sleeping Beauty.

• Much of the book’s narrative depth was stripped away from the ballet libretto, leaving only the thinnest plot thread: party, battle, magical journey [20:04–21:44].

• Tchaikovsky struggled with depression, recent personal loss, and creative dissatisfaction:

  “What comes out is colorless, dry, hasty and wretched. The awareness that things are not going well torments me…and I have not for a long time felt as unhappy as now.” — Tchaikovsky’s letter, [21:44]

• Marius Petipa, originally set to choreograph, became ill or possibly just uninspired, leaving much of the choreographic work to his assistant, Lev Ivanov [23:42–24:21].

• Some scenes, like the famous "Trepak" dance, evolved substantially because choreographers and dancers improvised or changed original instructions [24:21–25:08].

5. Premiere and Initial Reception (1892)

• Debuted at the Mariinsky Theater, St. Petersburg — paired with Tchaikovsky’s opera Iolanta [25:12].
• Mixed Reviews:

  • Tsar Alexander III enjoyed it: “was delighted and sent for me to his box and said a whole lot of kind words.” — Tchaikovsky [27:09]

  • Critics panned the lack of coherent plot, Act 1’s abundance of children, absence of substantial ballet until late in the program — [27:24–29:25]:

    “The Nutcracker can under no condition be called a ballet. It does not satisfy even one of the demands of a ballet.” — Contemporary critic [27:58]

  • Nevertheless, Tchaikovsky’s score was praised, if sometimes as “good music expended on such nonsense” [29:25].

6. Choreographic Evolution and Spread

• Original choreography not fully preserved; early versions quickly adjusted, especially after the Russian Revolution [29:53].
• The Nutcracker Suite (from the full score) became an orchestral mainstay even as the ballet itself languished [30:32–30:49].

7. The Nutcracker’s Global Transformation & American Adoption

• Not a holiday staple in Russia; performances there remained infrequent, sometimes with radical reinterpretations (Clara and Sugar Plum Fairy as the same character, casting adults instead of children) [34:13].

• Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo introduced excerpts in the U.S. in 1940; Disney's Fantasia (1940) further popularized the music [35:43–36:36].

• Note on Stereotypes: Many original dance sequences depict national stereotypes, which have since been critiqued and, in some productions, revised [36:36, 44:00].

• San Francisco Ballet’s 1944 full-length production = first full Nutcracker in the U.S., with input from George Balanchine [37:18].

• 1954: George Balanchine’s New York City Ballet staging solidified the ballet as a cornerstone of the American holiday season [39:00].

  • Featured Maria Tallchief (Sugar Plum Fairy), a groundbreaking moment as she was the first American prima ballerina [39:00].

  • The “childlike wonder” and the use of children, criticized in Russia, resonated with American audiences seeking family-friendly entertainment [39:48]:

    “It captured a sense of childlike holiday wonder. …Look at those kids. They're adorable. This is wholesome family entertainment.” — Holly [39:48]

• Annual holiday performances became a financial backbone for American ballet companies, sometimes accounting for half of yearly revenue [41:48].

  “We are all one Nutcracker closer to death.” — Attributed to dance critic Richard Buckle, riffing on Nutcracker fatigue [42:24]

• Spread to schools and youth centers, further popularizing ballet across North America [42:24–42:47].

• Helped popularize nutcracker dolls as holiday decorations; Jackie Kennedy’s White House Nutcracker-themed tree in 1961 began a new American tradition [42:47].

8. Modern Adaptations and Ongoing Controversies

• Ongoing efforts to revise or address the ballet’s racial stereotypes in the national dances—approaches vary greatly between companies [44:00].
• The Nutcracker is highly adaptable: examples include
  • Pacific Northwest Ballet (1980s): Maurice Sendak-inspired sets, returning to Hoffmann’s darker vision [45:28].
  • Mark Morris’ “The Hard Nut” (1991): Satirical reimagining [46:02].
  • Harlem Nutcracker (1996): Incorporates Duke Ellington’s jazz; centered on a grandmother character [46:20].
  • Debbie Allen’s Hot Chocolate Nutcracker: Uses diverse music and dance, narrated by rats [46:37].
  • Local Variations: Moscow Ballet’s version includes Russian folk figures and changes the protagonist’s name (Marie → Masha) [46:52].

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Even if you have never experienced this whole ballet, music from The Nutcracker has also become a huge part, not just of the Christmas season, but also beyond it.” — Tracy [03:38]
• “It's a little odd when you think about it that the Nutcracker ballet has become such a phenomenon…considering that it is a Russian adaptation of a German story that was never really a Christmas staple in its home country.” — Tracy [04:13]
• “What comes out is colorless, dry, hasty and wretched…” — Tchaikovsky (Letter, 1891) [21:44]
• “The Nutcracker can under no condition be called a ballet.” — Contemporary Russian critic [27:58]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [04:39] — Hoffmann’s story: plot, themes, and differences from the ballet.
• [13:58] — Alexandre Dumas adapts the story, paving the way for the ballet.
• [17:39] — Tchaikovsky’s career and challenges composing The Nutcracker.
• [20:04] — Ballet libretto’s departure from rich narrative roots.
• [23:42] — Choreographic disagreements and improvisation.
• [25:12] — The Nutcracker’s St. Petersburg premiere and reception.
• [34:13] — Choreographic reinterpretations and spotty Russian performances.
• [35:43] — The Nutcracker’s first steps outside Russia, Fantasia’s influence.
• [37:18] — The U.S. revival: San Francisco (1944), then New York City Ballet (1954).
• [41:48] — The Nutcracker as an American tradition and financial lynchpin.
• [44:00] — Discussion of racial stereotypes and evolving modern staging.
• [45:28] — Modern reimaginings of The Nutcracker.

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Conclusion

Stuff You Missed in History Class unpacks how The Nutcracker transformed from a dark German fairy tale into a Russian ballet that, after decades of lukewarm and patchy reception, took off as an unlikely American holiday tradition. The hosts deftly explore the ballet’s artistry, controversies, reinventions, and enduring power—demonstrating why, year after year, audiences flock to the theater for Clara, the Mouse King, and the Kingdom of Sweets.

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For further behind-the-scenes stories, the hosts tease their own ballet experiences and encourage listener correspondence — but the heart of the episode is this lively, thorough historical sleigh ride from page to stage and across continents.

Transcript

[Tracy V. Wilson]

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[Holly Fry]

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Happy Saturday. The first performance of the ballet the Nutcracker took place in St. Petersburg, Russia on December 6, 1892 in the old style calendar that Russia was still using at the time. That is December 18th on the Gregorian calendar, which is the calendar we use today. We are bringing our episode on the Nutcracker out as today's Saturday classic for its 133rd birthday, at least approximately. If you sort of disregard the calendar.

[Holly Fry]

Math, this episode originally came out on December 13, 2021. Please enjoy.

Welcome to Stuff youf Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartradio.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson And I'm Holly Fry. The Nutcracker has become such a huge tradition for so many people around Christmas. I know for my own part, my mom and I went to the North Carolina School of the Arts production of the Nutcracker together for many, many years. We had a family friend a little older than me who went from being Clara as a child to being asked to come back and be the Sugar Plum Fairy after she had gone on to continue her dance education in New York. For a whole lot of people, the Nutcracker is the first ballet they ever experience, or maybe the only ballet they ever experience. And it's by far the biggest show and the biggest source of ticket revenue for a lot of ballet companies. And even if you have never experienced this whole ballet, music from the Nutcracker has also become a huge part, not just of the Christmas season, but also beyond it. Like, I can even remember a commercial from the 1980s that set a Smurfberry Crunch jingle to the march from act one.

[Holly Fry]

I will maybe sing that in our behind the Scenes.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Okay, I will try to remember that. You just said that.

It's a little odd when you think about it that the Nutcracker ballet has become such a phenomenon, particularly in North America, but it's also spread to other places too, considering that it is a Russian adaptation of a German story that was never really a Christmas staple in its home country. So that is the story that we are going to tell on the show today.

[Holly Fry]

The ballet the Nutcracker is Based on the 1816 story the Nutcracker and the Mouse King by Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffman, or ETA Hoffman. His name at birth was actually Ernst Theodor Wilhelm, but he changed Wilhelm to Amadeus out of admiration for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Hoffman was born in 1776 in Konigsberg, Prussia, now Kaliningrad, Russia. Although he spent most of his adult life in what is now Germany, Hoffman.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Wore a lot of hats. He trained as a lawyer and served as a law officer. But before turning his attention to music, he worked as a composer and a music critic. He was also an artist, a theater director and a writer. And his written work included a lot of fairy tales, including works for children. His fiction tended to be pretty haunting and strange, with stories that carried a whole sense of ambiguity. They blurred the lines or toyed with the relationships between imagination and reality. And this included his work for young readers. Even though a lot of children's literature at that point tended to focus more on more heavy handed didactic stories and morality tales, that wasn't the only stuff being published, but a Lot of it was very, very moralizing.

[Holly Fry]

The Nutcracker and the Mouse King is sometimes described as the first fantasy written specifically for children. The story contains 14 short chapters, some of which just stop rather than reaching any sort of logical pause in the narrative. There is some speculation that it was broken up this way so that it could be read one chapter per night, starting on Christmas Eve, as the story does, and ending with Epiphany on January 6th.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

So parts of the story will be familiar to anyone who has seen the Nutcracker ballet. The main character is a seven year old girl, although her name is Marie Stahlbaum, not Clara Silberhaus, as it is in a lot of productions of the Nutcracker. She has a younger brother, Fritz, and an older sister, Louise, although Louise does not play a big part in the story. Their godfather, Drosselmeyer, is both beloved and a little frightening. He is old and mysterious and wears an eye patch, and he arrives on Christmas Eve with gifts for the family.

[Holly Fry]

One of those gifts is an ingenious clockwork palace, but the children, especially Fritz, are quickly bored of it. The clockwork figures just do the same thing over and over. Then Marie finds a nutcracker among the other Christmas gifts. Basic tools made to crack nuts have existed at least since the 14th century, but carved wooden nutcracker dolls, typically made to look like soldiers, started to become popular in 17th century Germany. In the story, the nutcracker is meant as a gift for everyone, but Marie is particularly taken with it and deeply upset when her brother breaks it by forcing it to crack a nut that is much too big.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Marie tries to bind up the nutcracker's injury with a ribbon, and Drosselmeyer does a more thorough repair. Later on that night, Marie puts the nutcracker to bed, and that's where the name Clara comes in. Clara is Marie's new doll, and Marie commandeers Clara's doll bed so that the nutcracker will have a comfortable place to recuperate.

[Holly Fry]

As she is checking on the nutcracker late at night, Marie sees the Mouse King and his army preparing for a war against her brother's toy soldiers, who have all come alive. The doll Clara saves the nutcracker when he tries to make a foolhardy leap from the top of a high shelf to join in the fray. Marie also sees Drosselmeyer on top of the grandfather clock in place of the owl that is normally there, although he does not intervene in the fight with the mice. After hitting the Mouse King with her shoe, Marie swoons and later wakes up in her own bed.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

So a lot of what we have just said follows a lot of the action of Act 1 in most productions of the Nutcracker. So if you've seen the Nutcrackers, probably pretty familiar. But then Hoffman's story, Marie cuts her arm on a piece of broken glass during this battle. And when Drosselmeyer comes to visit her during her recovery, he tells her a story, one involving a royal clockmaker, also named Drosselmeyer. In this story within a story, Clockmaker Drosselmeyer served a king and queen who had a beautiful baby daughter, Princess Pirlipat. The queen was preparing fat to make sausages or puddings, which were the king's favorite dish, when Lady Mouse Rink, who's basically the queen of the mice, asked her for some of it. The queen obliged, but then Lady Mouse Rank and her kin ate so much of the fat that there was not enough left for the king's puddings.

[Holly Fry]

The king was furious, and Drosselmeyer the clockmaker decided to use his ingenuity to build traps to get rid of all the mice. Lady Mouserink, of course, did not appreciate that so many of her kin were killed in the royal family's new mousetraps. So she cursed Princess Pirlipat with ugliness. After consulting with the royal astrologer, Drosselmeyer determined that Princess Pirlipat could only be cured with a supernaturally hard Krakatuck nut, cracked open and presented to her by a young man who had never been shaved and never worn boots.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

After years and years of searching, Drosselmeyer finally found a Krakatuck nut in possession of his brother in Nuremberg and his brother's son. So his nephew turned out to have never been shaved and never worn boots. Uncle and nephew returned to the palace with the nut, where a long line of potential suitors lined up to try to bite it open. All of them failed until the younger Drosselmeyer, that nephew, the last in line, succeeded.

[Holly Fry]

But the young Drosselmeyer and Princess Pirlipat did not live happily ever after. Just after breaking the curse on the princess, the clockmaker's nephew accidentally stepped on Lady Mouserink, killing her. With her dying breath, Lady Mouserink cursed him, transforming him into a nutcracker. Princess Pirlipat, horrified, banished the nutcracker. And his uncle, the clockmaker, the royal astronomer, who was also exiled for his role in all of this, predicted that the nutcracker's curse would be lifted only if someone fell in love with him, of course.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

At this point, Marie, hearing this story, concludes that it is real, that her beloved Nutcracker toy is really the transmogrified nephew of the royal clockmaker. And that royal clockmaker is none other than her godfather, Drosselmeyer. Marie demands to know why Drosselmeyer is not helping his nephew. After all, she saw him right there on the clock on the night that the Nutcracker fought the Mouse King.

[Holly Fry]

Once Marie has deduced what's going on, the Mouse King starts demanding tribute, eating his way through all her treats and toys. Then one day, she notices that the Nutcracker has a spot of blood on his neck. As she's cleaning it off, he asks for a sword. She gives it to him, and he is finally victorious in his fight against the Mouse King. Cutting off the Mouse King's seven heads and presenting Marie with seven little crowns.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

The Nutcracker takes Marie to a magical kingdom with meadows made of candy, a lemonade river, and towns made of gingerbread and bon bons. She soon learns that the Nutcracker is the Prince of Comfortureborg, or the Kingdom of Sweets.

[Holly Fry]

Marie once again wakes up in her own bed, and when she tries to tell her family what has happened, they are dismissive. But soon her godfather, Drosselmeyer's young nephew, arrives from Nuremberg. The nephew thanks Marie for saving him, and he proposes. A year and a day later, Marie and the younger Drosselmeyer marry and from there reign as King and queen of the Kingdom of Sweets.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

This whole story is twisting and layered. It folds back on itself at various points. Marie often tells her parents what she's experienced and seen, only for them to blame her fevered mind and order her to stop telling such wild tales. As her godfather Drosselmeyer tells her this story, he also suggests that it's real. But then when he talks to her parents, he dismisses what she's saying as fancy. As one example, he tells her parents that the Mouse King's seven crowns are a gift that he gave her years before, certainly not something belonging to a seven headed Mouse King.

[Holly Fry]

Gaslighting the book's tone is fairly ominous, actually, and it draws heavily from German romanticism. The Brothers Grimm and their dark and sometimes gruesome collections of fairy tales date from around this same time. Past podcast subject Caspar David Friedrich was another of Hoffman's contemporaries, and many of his landscapes have a similarly eerie and foreboding, although still very beautiful feel.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

But in 1844, more than 20 years after E.T.A. hoffman's death, past podcast subject Alexandre Dumas Pere adapted the Nutcracker and the Mouse King and translated it into French. The resulting book had the same basic plot and the same sort of story within a story, but with a tone that was generally a lot lighter and more cheerful than the original. And it is this version that was adapted into a ballet, or at least.

[Holly Fry]

Part of it was. We're gonna talk more about that after a sponsor break.

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This week on the podcast, I am sitting down with Jenny Garth, host of the iHeart podcast. I choose me to discuss the new Audible adaptation of the timeless Jane Austen classic Pride and Prejudice. This is not a trick question. There's no wrong answer. What role would I play?

[Tracy V. Wilson]

You know what?

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I can see you as Mr. Darcy. You got a little Colin Firth.

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born in Russia in 1840 and he started composing music by the age of four and taking piano lessons at five. But Russia didn't have a formal system of education for musicians and composers yet, so this it did not occur to his parents at first that this could be a career for him, so they focused his education on the idea that he would become a civil servant. That eventually changed, though. He became one of the first students at the St. Petersburg Conservatory after it was established in 1862, and he eventually became famous both within and outside of Russia, composing seven symphonies, 11 operas and various concertos, cantatas, quartets, choralworks and three ballets. Swan Lake, the Sleeping Beauty and the.

[Holly Fry]

Nutcracker and the Nutcracker Ballet was part of a two part commission from Russia's Imperial Theaters in St. Petersburg, the other part being a one act opera. The ballet was his second collaboration to include both Imperial Theater's director Ivan Vsevlovsky and French choreographer Marius Petipa, chief choreographer of the Imperial Ballet. The three men had previously worked together on the Sleeping Beauty, with Zevlovsky commissioning the work, writing the libretto and being heavily involved in the costume and set design, and Petipa choreographing the ballet and providing detailed instructions to Tchaikovsky on the music.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

The Sleeping Beauty had been a success after opening at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg in 1890, and Vesvlowski was hoping for something similar to happen with the Nutcracker. The Nutcracker and the Mouse King had become a well known and widely read children's story, and he chose Alexandre Dumas adaptation of it as the ballet's starting point.

[Holly Fry]

Even though classical ballet does not typically include spoken language or narration. By the 19th century, the process of creating a ballet generally started still with a libretto, a written narrative laying out the story that the ballet would tell the composer, choreographer, set designer and costume designer, basically actor. Everyone who worked on creating the ballet would rely on this libretto to translate the story for the stage. The Nutcrackers libretto is generally credited to both Zhevoloski and Petipa, although it is not entirely clear who did what in preparing it.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

But the Nutcracker collaboration among these men did not seem to have gone as well as it did with the Sleeping Beauty. With both ballets, Petipa provided Tchaikovsky with detailed instructions about the type of music that was needed. As in the full ballet was broken down into its scenes and dances and variations, with Petipa giving very precise instructions about how many measures of what kind of music was needed for each of them. It reads almost like a shopping list, but in the Sleeping Beauty, these notes and the libretto, they had added up to a story that had deeper themes, which Tchaikovsky could explore through musical devices. Like leitmotifs, these represented aspects of the story while also unifying the ballet. In addition to the story of Princess Aurora, the Sleeping Beauty also dealt with themes of good versus evil, and Tchaikovsky could just explore all of this and represent it through music.

[Holly Fry]

Meanwhile, the libretto for the Nutcracker had abandoned the deeper themes and ambiguities of Hoffman's story. The entire middle portion of the Nutcracker and the Mouse King had been cut almost entirely, leaving only the Christmas party, Drosselmeyer bringing gifts, the battle between the Nutcracker and the Mouse King, and the voyage to the Kingdom of Sweets. After a grand final waltz, the Nutcracker was to end with an apotheosis with a beehive surrounded by bees. The main character, now named Clara, did not return home after her travels through the Kingdom of Sweets. So it really wasn't even clear what the point of it all was.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

On top of his creative dissatisfaction, Tchaikovsky experienced depression and anxiety throughout his life, along with social pressures and taboos stemming from his attraction to other men at a time when homosexuality was both illegal and deeply stigmatized. And all of this may have fed into his struggle to get started on the Nutcracker. In April of 1891, he wrote to Zevlovsky about it, saying, quote, here in Rouen, I had to call on extraordinary willpower to make an agonizing effort in order to work. As a result, what comes out is colorless, dry, hasty and wretched. The awareness that things are not going well torments me and agonizes me to the point of sickness. A consuming depression constantly gnaws at my heart, and I have not for a long time felt as unhappy as now.

[Holly Fry]

The day after Tchaikovsky wrote this letter, he learned by reading it in a newspaper that his sister Alexandra had died. He was at that moment on the way to board a ship for a tour of the United States, where he would, among other things, conduct music he had composed at the grand opening of Carnegie Hall.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

This would have been terrible in any circumstance, but this was particularly terrible timing. But Chakosky did not cancel his tour or his appearances in the United States. Instead, it seems as Though he took this transatlantic voyage as a time to contemplate and to refocus, music historians and theorists have noted that the Nutcracker incorporates more borrowed folk melodies and existing musical themes than most of his other work does, kind of suggesting that once he did finally get underway, he still had trouble feeling creative. There's also some suggestion that the character of the Sugarplum Fairy is meant to embody his late sister, who was known to the family as Sasha.

[Holly Fry]

Tchaikovsky may not have been the only person who was facing very real creative trouble with the Nutcracker. Although Marius Petipa had been the one to write Tchaikovsky's instructions for the music and initial notations for the choreography, he did not choreograph most of the ballet. He became ill shortly after that work began and he left most of it to his assistant, Lev Ivanov. According to Petipa's memoirs, Ivanov did all the staging and choreographed all the dances. Petipa was 73 when this happened, but there is some speculation that he really wasn't all that sick and he just kind of didn't want to work on this nonsensical show.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Even I've worked from Perepa's notes, but he didn't always follow them. For example, in Act 2, Petipa called for, quote, Trepak for the end of the dance, turning on the floor. Trepak is a folk dance from Ukraine and Russia. But Ivanov took this piece in a totally different direction, using hoops. And lead dancer Alexander Shuriev choreographed his part himself. This is why in some productions of the Nutcracker Day, Trey Pak is this intensely athletic dance, full of leaping and squatting and dancers that are dressed as like peasants, or maybe Cossacks will. In others they are in candy stripes and dancing with hoops. If you've only seen the first version, the first time you've seen the second one.

You might feel like it was a ripoff.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah. Tchaikovsky compiled a Nutcracker suite featuring selections from the ballet, which was first performed in March of 1892. And the full ballet premiered at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, Russia on December 18th of that year, or December 6th. Under the old style calendar. It followed Tchaikovsky's one act opera Iolanta, which had also been the other part of this commission.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

One of the criticisms of Tchaikovsky's work during his lifetime was that it was not Russian enough. But the Nutcracker includes several elements that are really hallmarks of this period of Russian theater and ballet. This is really considered to be Russian ballet's golden age. Tsar Alexander III was a patron of the arts and the theater, and a lot of the work that was created during his reign involved dramatic sets and costumes and the sorts of spectacles that the Tsar generally enjoyed.

[Holly Fry]

Much of the second act of the Nutcracker is also essentially a court celebration, with Clara as a guest to the kingdom of sweets, being presented with a pageant of all of the kingdom's best and brightest. And some of this court review highlights Russia in its presentation, especially the series of Spanish, Chinese, Arabian and Russian dances, also known as Chocolate, Tea, Coffee, Tripak, especially in Petipa's original notations, Trepak was to be the showstopper, suggesting that Russia was the best among nations. These dances combine with others in Act 2 to suggest the idea of many nations living together harmoniously under the rule of One benevolent monarch, that is the Sugar Plum Fairy. Along with her prince. A 2016 article in the journal Dance Research by Damien Maillet also explores the idea that the use of French songs and costumes, inspired by fashion of the French Revolutionary era, allude to the alliance between France and Russia that developed in the 1890s.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

And Tsar Alexander III does seem to have liked this ballet. Tchaikovsky wrote a letter to his brother saying that the czar, quote, was delighted and sent for me to his box and said a whole lot of kind words.

[Holly Fry]

I love that. A whole lot of kind words. It's just a great turn of phrase. But as for everybody else, reviews a little bit mixed. And the bad reviews were often explicitly and pointedly bad. People pointed out the same aspects of the libretto that had caused Tchaikovsky so much frustration, including the fact that Act 1 and Act 2 almost felt like two totally different ballets, neither of which made a whole lot of sense. Some critics insisted that Act 1 was barely a ballet at all. People mostly stood around and pantomimed, in.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

The words of one critic, quote, first of all, the Nutcracker can under no condition be called a ballet. It does not satisfy even one of the demands of a ballet. Ballet as a basic genre of art is mimed drama and consequently must contain all the elements of norm drama. On the other hand, there must be a place in ballet for plastic attitudes and dances made up of the entire essence of classical choreography. There is nothing of this in the Nutcracker. There is not even a subject.

[Holly Fry]

And also, the stage was full of children. At this point in Russian ballet history, younger ballet students did not usually share the stage with older teens and adults. Reviewers bemoaned the fact that this ballet seemed to have been made by children for children. To add to that Many of the boys in it were not dance students at all, they had been recruited from a military academy.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

The focus on children in the ballet's first act also meant that the most striking balletic performances done by the company's most prominent dancers didn't happen until very late in the evening in Act 2. And because the Nutcracker followed this other one act opera, that meant that they got on stage very, very late. People felt like they had watched a whole opera and a bunch of kids running around for an hour before the real ballet even started, and then that ballet was over with no real resolution.

[Holly Fry]

Overall, though, Tchaikovsky's score was praised, although sometimes that praise was a little bit backhanded, as in in sum, it's a pity that so much good music is expended on such nonsense, so unworthy of attention, but the music in general is excellent. Tchaikovsky clearly had huge trouble getting started and found the early work on the ballet incredibly difficult, but it does seem that he was pleased enough with the score once he was actually done with it.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

One thing to note here is that we don't actually have the choreography from the Nutcracker's debut performances. Petipa's instructions to Tchaikovsky have survived along with his notes and the libretto, but the oldest surviving set of more complete, comprehensive notes was not written down until a few years later. So it's not really clear whether any of the criticisms of the dancing itself itself led the choreography to evolve over the Mariinsky Theater's 1892-93 ballet season. Once that season was over, though, it does not appear that major changes were made to the Nutcracker until after the Russian Revolution.

[Holly Fry]

While the ballet's reception was mixed to pour, its music became far more popular, particularly the Nutcracker Suite. Orchestras in Europe and North America started performing the Nutcracker Suite in the early to mid-1890s, and it became widely recognizable on both sides of the Atlantic.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

It wasn't until decades later that the Nutcracker became a winter holiday tradition, though we will talk more about that after a sponsor break.

[Holly Fry]

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[Holly Fry]

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

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[Holly Fry]

Watch it on prime video starting January 8th.

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[Kal Penn]

Hey, audiobook lovers. This week on the podcast I'm sitting down with musician, producer and walking encyclopedia Questlove. We're talking about Mark Ronson's memoir Night how to be a DJ in 90s New York City. All right, like we talked about before, Mark Ronson found sanctuary in the DJ booth. What's a tool or piece of equipment in the studio or on stage that gives you the most control?

[Ed Helms]

So I have two microphones on stage. We have the microphone that you hear as the audience. Then we have a second microphone in which we communicate with each other.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Other.

[Ed Helms]

I feel like that second microphone kind of saved all of our friendships. No band likes each other after 20 years or 25 years. Like the Beatles broke up in seven and a half years and we're going on 35.

[Kal Penn]

Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartradio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

After the 1892-1893 ballet season, the Nutcracker only made spotty appearances on Russian stages for a while. Sometimes companies performed only the second act or a selection of highlights. The ballet was revived in 1909, and in 1919 Alexander Gorski staged a version that combined the character of Clara with the Sugar Plum Fairy for the first time. Vasily Vaijnonen introduced new choreography in 1934, also casting adult dancers in what had originally been children's roles. But Overall, the Nutcrackers appearances on Russian and then Soviet stages was pretty spotty.

[Holly Fry]

Although the narrative takes place at Christmas, it also was not a Christmas standard. Easter is really the more important and festive holiday in the Eastern Orthodox Church. The Soviet Union also banned Christmas celebrations in the late 1920s, leading to the rise of New Year's as a secular holiday.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

The Nutcracker was performed outside of Russia and the Soviet Union for the first time in 1934. That was in London, based on choreographic notes by Nicholas Sergeyev, who had been the company manager of the Imperial Ballet in St. Petersburg when he left Russia in 1918. He had taken the choreography for more than 20 ballets with him. They had been recorded using a dance notation method that had been developed by Vladimir ivanovich Stepanov.

[Holly Fry]

In 1940, the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo presented selections from the Nutcracker while on tour in the U.S. then Disney's Fantasia debuted in theaters on November 13th of 1940. This film was not a financial success, in part because World War II shut down movie theaters in Europe, but it is credited with popularizing classical music in the United States, including selections from the Nutcracker Suite.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Some of the Nutcracker pieces in Fantasia include the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, during which fairies flitter about opening flowers and sending dew drops down spider webs. Mushrooms twirl around during the Chinese dance. There are long tailed fish that gracefully swim around in coffee, and thistles that very energetically dance during trepak.

[Holly Fry]

Although neither the fish nor the mushrooms are human, they both retain some of the exoticized stereotype depictions that are often part of the Nutcracker Ballet during the Chinese and Arabian dances. The mushrooms, for example, have slanted eyes and a posture that suggests they're wearing robes, and the fish's movement and sensual demeanor suggests a harem. Fantasia has a content warning when viewed on Disney Today, noting that it includes negative depictions and or mistreatment of people or cultures, although that's usually interpreted as referencing centaurs who appear in the Pastoral Symphony, some of which have been cut out of the current version of the film.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

When introducing the Nutcracker Suite portion of Fantasia, narrator Deems Taylor explains that the Nutcracker Suite is part of a ballet that wasn't much of a success and quote, nobody performs it nowadays. That was more or less True in 1940, but today that sentence is hilarious. Four years after Fantasia, the San Francisco Ballets staged the first U.S. performance of the full Nutcracker Ballet. The ballet's founder and choreographer, William Christensen, talked through ideas for it with choreographer George Balanchine and Alexandra Danilova of Ballets Russe. Christensen had never actually seen the full Nutcracker ballet and later said that these conversations, and particularly Balanchine's insights had a huge influence on the San Francisco production.

[Holly Fry]

Then, in 1954, the Nutcracker opened at the New York City Ballet with choreography by co founder George Balanchine, whose name has been anglicized from George Balanchivadze. He was born in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1904, and he had studied at the Imperial School of Ballet and the Mariinsky Theater. He appeared in productions of the Nutcracker before the Russian Revolution, which means that he learned and observed choreography that had started with Petipa and Ivanov back in the 19th century. He also learned other versions by other choreographers before leaving Russia in 1924. Lincoln Kirstein invited Balanchine to the US in 1933 to establish the School of American Ballet and the American Ballet Company. Kirstein and Balanchine went on to establish the New York City Ballet in 1948.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

In the New York City Ballet's 1954 Nutcracker, Past podcast subject Maria Tallchief danced to the part of the Sugar Plum Fairy. Tallchief was a citizen of Osage Nation and is regarded as the first prima ballerina in the United States. In this version, the young protagonist's name is Marie rather than Clara and Marie. The Nutcracker Prince and other roles in this first one were danced by almost 40 children from the School of American Ballet. This production was also one in which Trapec features dancers dressed in candy stripes dancing with hoops. Although Balanchine's Nutcracker first opened on February 2nd of 1954, it quickly became the heart of a special holiday ballet season, and the New York City Ballet has performed it every year since then.

[Holly Fry]

A lot of what made the Nutcracker so reviled in Russia in 1892 had nearly the opposite effect in the United States in 1954. It was still not a show that made a lot of sense from a plot standpoint, but it captured a sense of childlike holiday wonder. The audience response was less ugh, what are these children doing here? This is ballet. And more oh, look at those kids. They're adorable. This is wholesome family entertainment. Even without a logical plot to follow, the Nutcrackers seem to celebrate values like home and family and holiday cheer. And that was not an accident. Balanchine and the rest of the creative team at the New York City Ballet had understood that their company desperately needed something that could have mass appeal, and. And the Nutcracker wound up suiting that need extremely well.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

And even though this was happening during the Cold War, when the United States was deeply and increasingly distrustful of the Soviet Union, which makes it seem real weird that people would get so excited about a Russian ballet, ballet was actually something of an exception. One of the many, many ways that the US and the USSR maintains a rivalry in competition competed with each other during the Cold War was through dance and ballet.

[Holly Fry]

Specifically, an abridged version of the New York City Ballet's Nutcracker aired on CBS in 1957, and then a somewhat more complete version aired the following year in 1958, with Balanchine in the role of Drosselmeyer. In the 1958 version, June Lockhart, who had recently replaced Cloris Leachman as Timmy's adoptive mother on the TV show Lassie, provides an opening introduction in which she says, quote, christmas Day isn't Christmas without a real old fashioned story of magic and miracles. Two televised ballets two years in a row establish the Nutcracker as an invented tradition.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

It reminds me a little bit of the. Yes, Virginia story that.

Had a similar trajectory. So Balanchine's Nutcracker was huge for the New York City Ballet and for ballet as a whole. As its popularity spread, it became the production that ballet companies used to help fund the rest of their season, sometimes getting about half of the year's ticket revenue just from the Nutcracker. That, of course, is a blessing and a curse. One widely repeated quote that's often attributed to dance critic Richard Buckle is that each Christmas quote, we are all one Nutcracker closer to death.

[Holly Fry]

For much of its history before this point, ballet had typically been performed on grand stages and before Royal Courts. And while the Nutcracker is certainly still performed among elite dance companies on prestigious stages, it's also found a home in places like elementary schools and youth centers. It has spurred on the popularity of ballet as an art form.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

The popularity of the Nutcracker also goes beyond ballet. It's one of the reasons why decorative nutcrackers ultimately spread beyond Germany, especially as holiday decorations. In 1961, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy chose Nutcracker ballet themed decorations for a Christmas tree in the Blue Room at the White House. And that established the tradition to have a themed Christmas tree at the Presidential residence.

[Holly Fry]

Sadly, the people who were most involved in the original creation of the Nutcracker did not live to see this success and influence. Lev ivanov died in 1901 at the age of 67. Ivan Vsyvoloski died in 1909 at the age of 74, and Marius Petipa died in 1910. He was 92. At that point, all three of them outlived Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, who died on November 6, 1893, or October 25 in the old Style calendar. His cause of death at the time was reported as cholera. But there is also speculation that he took his own life and that this may have been connected to a matter of honor related to his sexual orientation. He was only 53 at the time, and the Nutcracker was his last ballet.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

One of the things that we've touched on a little bit is that parts of the Nutcracker often involve racist stereotypes, especially the national dances of Spanish or chocolate, Arabian or Coffee, Chinese or Tea and Russian or Trepak. Trepak, of course, was meant to be a reflection of Russian ideals, including bravery and physical and military prowess, especially in its original conception as a folk dance. Although the music for the Arabian Dance is adapted from A Georgian Lullaby, it and the Spanish, Arabian and Chinese dances have historically all used musical elements and costumes and choreography to suggest some racial and ethnic stereotypes. How or whether ballet companies staging the Nutcracker have dealt with this in more recent years is really all over the place. From making zero changes to re envisioning those pieces in a completely different direction, to hiring dancers from places like China and the Middle east to re choreograph those pieces in a more authentic way.

[Holly Fry]

The Nutcracker has also proved itself to be almost infinitely adaptable at this point. There are multiple film and TV versions, along with prequel, sequels and reimaginings. Although many stage productions are based on Balanchine's choreography or on other choreography that has its roots in the work of Petipa and Ivanov. There are so many others, so we're gonna list just a few examples.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

In the 1980s, the Pacific Northwest Ballet and choreographer Kent Stowell wanted to return to the spirit of E.T.A. hoffman's original story. To that end, they brought in Maurice Sendak to design the sets and write the libretto for a new staging of the Nutcracker. This became the Pacific Northwest Ballet's version of the Nutcracker for about three decades, and it was released as a film in 1986. They also published a translation of E.T.A. hoffman's story as a book. It was translated by Ralph Manheim and accompanied by Sendak's illustrations.

[Holly Fry]

A version called Hard Nut debuted in Brussels in 1991, and it uses Tchaikovsky's score and is based on the ETA Hoffman story, but it is a satiric comedy with choreography by Mark Morris and a production designed based on the work of illustrator and cartoonist Charles Burns.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Harlem Nutcracker debuted in 1996, choreographed by Donald Byrd and working off of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn's arrangement of the Nutcracker Suite. And in this ballet, Clara is a widowed grandmother facing her first Christmas without her late husband.

[Holly Fry]

Debbie Allen Dance Academy's Hot Chocolate Nutcracker incorporates all kinds of different music and dance styles, with the rats narrating the story. Parts of this are shown in the 2020 documentary Dance Hot Chocolate Nutcracker.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

And then there are also just smaller special touches that ballet companies around the world have used to ground their productions of the Nutcracker in a particular time and place, and that includes in its home of Russia, Moscow Ballet's Great Russian Nutcracker includes a giant Matryushka doll and Russian folk figures like Dead Morots and Sneguruchka. This ballet's heroine is known as Masha, which is a Russian derivative of the.

[Holly Fry]

Name Marie oh, Nutcracker.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

We'll talk about some more Nutcracker stuff in the behind the scenes because so much I have no I have experience as an audience member and you have experience as a dancer.

[Holly Fry]

Yep.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. If you'd like to send us a note, our email address is history podcast at IHOP.

And you can subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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You are the fittest of the fit. Only one of you will leave here with an IFIT contract for $250,000.

[Holly Fry]

This is where mindset comes in.

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Someone will be eliminated.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Pressure is coming down.

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This is Trainer Games.

[Holly Fry]

Watch it on prime video starting January 8th.

[Kal Penn]

Hey audiobook lovers, I'm Kalpen.

[Ed Helms]

I'm Ed Helms.

[Kal Penn]

Ed and I are inviting you to join the best sounding book club you've ever heard with our new book podcast, Hearsay. The Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club.

[Ed Helms]

Each week we sit down with your favorite iHeart podcast hosts and some very special guests to discuss the latest and greatest audiobooks from Audible.

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Listen to hearsay on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow earsay and start listening on the free iHeartradio app today.

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

Co. It's the season to come together over your holiday favorites at Starbucks. Warm up with a creamy caramel brulee latte, get festive with an iced gingerbread chai, or share a velvety peppermint mocha together is the best place to be at Starbucks. This is an I Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.