Crackin' apart the history of the Nutcracker
The Nutcracker has been commonly known as a classic Christmas fairy tale, familiar to millions of people around the world, through the theatrical performances of ballerinas. To briefly recap this engaging story, it revolves around a young girl’s Christmas Eve and her awakening to the world around her, as well as her first experience with romantic love. the first complete version of The Nutcracker had been performed by the San Francisco Ballet company in 1944, sparking a tradition within American families. So, where exactly did this tale of twisted fate and exhilarating journey of a young girl originate from? The Nutcracker was an interpretation by a French writer, Alexandre Dumas Pére, of a famous collection of tales written by E.T.A. Hoffmann, the original author of The Nutcracker. Hoffmann was a hugely famous and celebrated writer. His works mainly consisted of stories and spooky tales that trespassed the border between fantasy and reality. Inanimate things were known to be personified in many of Hoffmann’s stories, and he was a champion of allowing his imagination to run wild. This is probably the explanation to the seven-headed rat king that appeared in Klara’s dream. In the original version of E.T.A. Hoffmann, Marie worries about a beautiful nutcracker that was broken. Later that night, it comes alive and spirals readers into a story beginning with armies of mice and toy soldiers which is perceived as either the child’s delirious nightmare or an alarming reality in which the show wanders into. Between one gruesome battle between the nutcracker prince, in which Marie falls in love with, and the seven-headed mouse king, Marie falls from her fevered dream into a glass cabinet, cutting her arm badly. Marie later hears stories of a deceive rodent mother avenging for her child’s death, and while she heals her wounds the mouse king brainwashes her in her sleep. Her family then forbids her from speaking of her “dreams” anymore, but when she still vows to love even an ugly nutcracker, the prince comes alive and marries her. The two of them leave her real life and carry on their love within the doll kingdom. Alexandre Dumas Pére attempted to lighten the dark story of a girl who coexists solely for an imagined prince, who later vanished, disempowered, and subjugated to a kingdom ruled by dolls through his own add-ons into the Nutcracker, including changing the main character’s name from Marie to Klara. Tracing back to it’s first premier a week before Christmas in the year of 1892, Alexandre Dumas Pére’s interpretation of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s original story the “Nutcracker and Mouse King” was set to music by Tchaikovsky and choreographed by marius Petipa. It did not grow in popularity or correlate with Christmas until later in the 1940’s when this ballet had been shared with western countries.
