Petipa's The Nutcracker ballet and Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker Suite

Ivan Vsevolozhsky

In my 2011 blogs about The Nutcracker, I devoted one entry to Alexandre Dumas' version of the story. Although the story is largely the same with some additions and subtle alterations, it was this version that saw Hoffmann's story become more widespread. It is believed that it was his version consulted in creating the famous ballet adaptation.

The ballet originated in Russia as the second half of a double bill program with an opera. The Imperial Theater of Saint Petersburg's Ivan Vsevolozhsky commissioned Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky to compose the music for both. Leading up the story for the ballet and the choreography would be Marius Petipa.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Tchaikovsky was a highly successful composer but personally had many personal issues, such as depression. He had two failed marriages, and despite Soviet attempts to expunge his same sex attractions, is noted to have been homosexual. He died less than a year after The Nutcracker debuted, some say it was a disease that took his life, but others believe it was suicide. His music is often a go-to example for classical music, particularly many of his Nutcracker themes.

It's been noted that Tchaikovsky had a lot of western influence in his music and it rarely sounded distinctly Russian. It's easy to see why this music has carried over into many adaptations of The Nutcracker outside of the ballet as it lends itself to being adapted for other purposes. As it was, the Russian dance (the Candy Canes) in the second act of The Nutcracker became especially beloved in Russia.

Marius Petipa

Marius Petipa was a well-accomplished choreographer, who had in the past shown a bit of a wild side in seducing married women, and he would tailor ballets around the talents of his own wife. Many of Petipa's ballets are considered to be notable in the genre. Yet while Petipa did begin the work, falling ill, a lot of the choreography work for The Nutcracker fell to his assistant, Lev Ivanov. It is debated as to which choreographer should receive credit for the ballet's original choreography.

The choice of The Nutcracker and the Mouse King as a story to adapt for the ballet was indeed puzzling. Ballet consists of two elements: music and dance. With no dialogue, storytelling was limited. Thus, Hoffmann's original story was greatly cut down and streamlined for the ballet adaptation. Further complicating the production was the number of roles to be filled by children. These performers would require simpler choreography than adult performers.

It is interesting that the original production of The Nutcracker appears to be where Marie was first renamed Clara, a switch that persists into many adaptations. I had originally wondered if Petipa changed it to prevent comparisons to his own name, but it actually seems I was close: his wife was named Maria, and his daughter was named Marie. (Interestingly, she married Sergei Gustavovich Legat, who played the Nutcracker in the original production.) Perhaps Petipa wanted to dodge his reputation of nepotism, or perhaps he didn't want a character to have the same name as his daughter, who was already in her own career as a dancer. So, it was changed to Clara.

It has been noted that Marie has a doll named Clara in the original book and much has been made over the two swapping names, but I've only noticed the doll being named at all in The Nutcracker Prince.

The ballet debuted on December 18, 1892, 74 years after the original Hoffmann story appeared. The story adaptation was as follows:

Clara and Fritz eagerly await their Christmas party, to be attended by many guests. At the party, their godfather Drosselmeyer presents a couple of dancing clockwork dolls that entertain until they wind down. Clara is enthralled with his gift of a nutcracker, but Fritz ends up breaking it. Clara cares for the broken Nutcracker.

At midnight, Clara sneaks back downstairs to check on the Nutcracker. Seeing Drosselmeyer on the clock, the room begins to fill with mice and the Christmas tree grows to a huge height. The Mouse King reveals himself, but the Nutcracker rises from his bed and calls the army of toys to arms. When the Mouse King is about to strike the Nutcracker, Clara throws her shoe at him, letting the Nutcracker get the upper hand and defeat him.

The Nutcracker transforms into a prince and takes Clara to a snowy pine forest, where the snowflakes dance.

Act 1, as you will note if you saw the previous blog, breaks down most of Hoffmann's plot to a small storyline. Act 2 takes place in a castle where various characters are going about as the Nutcracker and Clara arrive. Chief among these is the Sugar Plum Fairy. In dance, the Nutcracker recounts the victory over the Mouse King. Various characters representing many drinks and sweets dance in celebration of Clara and the Nutcracker being crowned the rulers of the kingdom.


Act 2 takes a few elements from the chapters in which Marie and the Nutcracker explore the Land of Sweets and arrive at Marzipan castle. There are people of all types involved with food. Yet, dancing was only noted in Hoffmann to occur at Marie's wedding celebration.

The reception of The Nutcracker was decidedly mixed, and the fact that it had been viewed in a double bill with Iolanta and ran past midnight likely didn't help the critics. Some critics hated some of the dancers, some loved them. One claimed it was impossible to tell what was happening.

In any case, the ballet was not re-staged for some time and would have been forgotten had Tchaikovsky not adapted eight pieces from his score into the 20 minute Nutcracker Suite. The popularity of the music kept interest in the complete work alive, and audiences across the United States heard a generous amount of it in Disney's Fantasia, accompanied with state of the art animation (for the time) in 1940.

Tchaikovsky's music had a life of its own. Not just in the Suite and in recordings and performances without the ballet, but in that it is lively and it's hard not to imagine movement while you listen. The beats in the music suggest movement, that something's going on. The grand nature of the Christmas party scenes fits Hoffmann's themes of excitedly celebrating the holiday as a child.

Stagings of the ballet first occurred in the United States in 1944, with choreographer George Balanchine beginning his famous version for the New York City ballet in 1954. This version is quite similar to the original version in plot.

Various other ballets have used Petipa's original choreography, some have adult dancers as the children, and some use original choreography or heavily alter the plot.

There was no way a ballet adaptation could do everything Hoffmann's original story did. Cutting away for the Nutcracker's backstory would be far too confusing, as would Marie's sacrifices to save the Nutcracker. Plot wise, the adaptation makes sense.

The problem is that this is the Nutcracker that people know, and as of recently, adaptations turn to it instead of the original text for their source, filling in the gaps of the story with original ideas that are rarely as good as Hoffmann's original. Yet, it's the ballet that has kept the story around for so long and kept it from slipping into obscurity. Much like MGM's The Wizard of Oz film is to L. Frank Baum's original The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, it's the landmark version and gateway to the original, but many people ignore going further than the famous version.

Regardless of how you feel about the ballet itself, I find it difficult to fault the music, as it's beautiful. As a kid, I loved the March and the other lively themes. Today, I love the Grand Pas De Deux at the end as it begins in beauty and melts into a darker theme before ending on a stirring note. To me, the final page of Hoffmann's story and the Final Waltz are basically inseparable.

Perhaps it is fitting that the ballet's grandest contribution to the Nutcracker legacy is the music. Let me quote from Hoffmann here:

[Music] reveals an unknown kingdom to mankind: a world that has nothing in common with the outward, material world that surrounds it, and in which we leave behind all predetermined conceptual feelings in order to give ourselves up to the inexpressible.