The Nutcracker

It’s a Russian adaptation of a German story and wasn’t really a Christmas staple in its home country. But music from the Nutcracker has also become a huge part of the Christmas season and beyond.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy Vie Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. The Nutcracker
has become such a huge tradition for so many people

(00:23):
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 Ferry
after she had gone on to continue her dance education

(00:46):
in New York. For a whole lot of people, the
Nutcracker is the first ballet they ever experienced, or maybe
the only ballet they ever experience, and it's by far
the biggest show and the I guest source of ticket
revenue for a lot of ballet companies. And even if
you have never experienced this whole ballet music from The

(01:09):
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 nineteen eighties that set
a smurfberry crunch jingle to the march from Act one.
I will maybe sing that in our behind the scenes, Okay,

(01:32):
I will try to remember that you just said that. Uh.
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

(01:53):
story that was never really a Christmas staple in its
home country. Um So that is the story that we're
going to tell on the show today. The ballet The
Nutcracker is based on the eighteen sixteen story The Nutcracker
and the Mouse King by Ernst Theodore Amadeus Hoffman or E. T. A. Hoffman.

(02:14):
His name at birth was actually Earnst Theodore ville Helm,
but he changed wille Helm to Amadeus out of admiration
for those gang Amadeus Mozart Hoffman was born in seventeen
seventy six and Khonugsburg, Prussia now Kaliningrad, Russia. Although he
spent most of his adult life in what is now Germany,
Hoffman wore a lot of hats. He trained as a lawyer,

(02:35):
and served as a law officer 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

(02:57):
of ambiguity. They blurred the lime, are 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. Up that wasn't the
only stuff being published, but a lot of it was very,

(03:20):
very moralizing. The Nutcracker and the Mouse King is sometimes
described as the first fantasy written specifically for children. The
story contains fourteen short chapter, 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,

(03:42):
starting on Christmas Eve as the story does, and ending
with Epiphany on January six, 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 Maurice Stalbaumb, not Clara Silber, how us,
as it is in a lot of productions of The Nutcracker.

(04:03):
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.
One of those gifts is an ingenious clockwork palace, but

(04:26):
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 fourteenth century, but carved wooden nutcracker dolls, typically

(04:46):
made to look like soldiers, started to become popular in
seventeenth century Germany. In the story, the Nutcracker is meant
as a gift for everyone, but Marie is particularly taken
with it and deep upset when her brother breaks it
by forcing it to crack a nut that is much
too big. Marie tries to bind up the Nutcracker's injury

(05:08):
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 commandeer's Clara's dollbed so that
the Nutcracker will have a comfortable place to recuperate. As
she is checking on the Nutcracker late at night, Marie

(05:31):
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

(05:52):
owl that is normally there, although he does not intervene
in the fight with the mice. After hitting the mouse
king with her shoe, Maurice wounds and later wakes up
in her own bed. So a lot of what we
have just said follows a lot of the action of
Act one in most productions of The Nutcracker, So if
you've seen The Nutcrackers, probably pretty familiar. But then Hoffmann's story.

(06:16):
Marie cuts her arm on a piece of broken glass
during this battle, and when drossell Meyer comes to visit
her during her recovery, he tells her a story, one
involving a royal clockmaker also named drossell Meyer, and the
story within a story. Clockmaker drossell Meyer served a king
and queen who had a beautiful baby daughter, Princess Perlapat.

(06:39):
The queen was preparing fat to make sausages or puddings,
which were the king's favorite dish, when Lady mouse Rank,
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 fact
that there was not enough left for the king's puddings.
The king was furious, and drossell Meyer, the clockmaker, decided

(07:02):
to use his ingenuity to build traps to get rid
of all the mice. Lady mouse Rank, of course, did
not appreciate that so many of her kin were killed
in the royal family's new mouse traps, so she cursed
Princess Pearl a Pat with ugliness. After consulting with the
royal astrologer, Drosselmeyer determined that Princess Pearl La Pat could
only be cured with a supernaturally hard krakatuck nut cracked

(07:26):
open and presented to her by a young man who
had never been shaved and never worn boots. 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

(07:47):
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 draw ussell Meyer that nephew,
the last in line, succeeded, but the young drossell Meyer
and Princess Pear La Pat did not live happily ever after.

(08:09):
Just after breaking the curse on the princess, the clockmaker's
nephew accidentally stepped on Lady mouse Rink, killing her with
her dying breath. Lady Mousehrink curse him, transforming him into
a Nutcracker. Princess pear La, pat horrified banished the Nutcracker
and his uncle, the Clockmaker. The Royal Astronomer, who was

(08:30):
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, 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

(08:53):
her godfather, Drosselmeyer. Marie demands to know why drossell Meyer
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. 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

(09:15):
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 seven heads and presenting Marie
with seven little crowns. The Nutcracker takes Marie to a

(09:36):
magical kingdom with meadows made of candy, a lemonade river,
and towns made of gingerbread and bond bonds. She soon
learns that the Nutcracker is the Prince of Comfort Turemburg,
or the Kingdom of Sweets. 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

(09:59):
her god father, Drossell Meyer'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
Drossell Meyer Mary and from there Rain is King and
Queen of the Kingdom of Sweets. This whole story is
twisting and layered. It folds back on itself at various points.

(10:23):
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

(10:46):
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 gas lighting. The
book's tone is fairly ominous, actually, and it draws heavily
from German romanticism. The brothers grim and They're dark and
sometimes grewesome collections of fairy tales date from around this

(11:08):
same time. Past podcast subject Casper David Friedrich was another
of Hoffmann's contemporaries, and many of his landscapes have a
similarly eerie and foreboding, although still very beautiful feel. But
in eighteen forty four, more than twenty years after e
t A. Hoffman's death, past podcast subject Alexandre do my

(11:30):
Pair adapted The Nutcracker and the Mouse King and translated
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 part
of it was. We're going to talk more about that

(11:52):
after a sponsor break. Pyotr Iliot Chikovsky was born in
Russia in eighteen forty and he started composing music by
the age of four and taking piano lessons at five.

(12:12):
But Russia didn't have a formal system of education for
musicians and composers yet, so 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 eighteen sixty two,

(12:35):
and he eventually became famous both within and outside of Russia,
composing seven symphonies, eleven operas and various concertos, cantatas, quartets,
choral works, and three ballets Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty
and The Nutcracker. And the Nutcracker ballet was part of
a two part commission from Russia's Imperial Theaters in St. Petersburg.

(12:59):
The other being a one act opera. The ballet was
his second collaboration to include both Imperial Theaters director Ivan
Vassevlowski and French choreographer Marius Petepa, chief choreographer of the
Imperial Ballet. The three men had previously worked together on
The Sleeping Beauty, with Zevlowski commissioning the work, writing the
libretto and being heavily involved in the costume and set design,

(13:22):
and Petepa choreographing the ballet and providing detailed instructions to
Chukovsky on the music. The Sleeping Beauty had been a
success after opening at the Marinsky Theater in St. Petersburg
in eighteen nine, and Vesvelovski was hoping for something similar
to happen with The Nutcracker. The Nutcracker and the Mouse

(13:43):
King had become a well known and widely read children's story,
and he chose Alexandre Duma's adaptation of it as the
ballet's starting point. Even though classical ballet does not typically
include spoken language or narration, by the nineteenth century, the
process of creating a ballet generally started still with a libretto,
a written narrative laying out the story that the ballet

(14:05):
would tell the composer, choreographer, set designer, and costume designer.
Basically 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 Velowski and Petipa,
although it is not entirely clear who did what in

(14:26):
preparing it. 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, Petapa 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 Petepa giving very precise

(14:51):
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 Chakovsky could explore through musical
devices like lip botifs. These represented aspects of the story

(15:14):
while also unifying the ballet. In addition to the story
of Princess Arora. The Sleeping Beauty also dealt with themes
of good versus evil, and Tchaikovsky could just explore all
of this and represent it through music. Meanwhile, the libretto
for The Nutcracker had abandoned the deeper themes and ambiguities
of Hoffmann's story. The entire middle portion of The Nutcracker

(15:37):
and the Mouse King had been cut almost entirely, leaving
only the Christmas party, Drossmeyer 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 bee
hive surrounded by bees. The main character, now named Clara,

(16:00):
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. 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

(16:22):
deeply stigmatized, and all of this may have fed into
his struggle to get started on the Nutcracker. In April
of eight 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

(16:42):
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. The

(17:04):
day after Chaikovsky 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. This would have
been terrible in any circumstance, but this was particularly terrible timing.

(17:28):
But Chikovsky did not cancel his tour or his appearances
in the United States. Insaid 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

(17:48):
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 sugar plumb Ferry is meant to embody his
late sister. He was known to the family as Sasha.
Chakovsky may not have been the only person who was
facing very real creative trouble with The Nutcracker. Although Marius

(18:12):
Petipa had been the one to write Chaikovsky's instructions for
the music and initial notations for the choreography, he did
not choreographed 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. Pettipa

(18:35):
was seventy three 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.
Evenov worked from Petipa's notes, but he didn't always follow them.
For example, in Act two, Pettypa called for a quote
tray pack for the end of the dance turning on

(18:55):
the floor. Tray Pack is a folk dance from Ukraine
and Russia. But even If took this piece in a
totally different direction using hoops and lead dancer Alexander Shiev
choreographed his part himself. This is why in some productions
of The Nutcracker to day Trepak is this intensely athletic

(19:16):
dance full of leaping and squatting and dancers that are
dressed as like peasants or maybe cossacks well and 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 rip off. Um yeah. Chakowski compiled and Nutcracker suite

(19:39):
featuring selections from the ballet, which was first performed in
March of eight and the full ballet premiered at the
marian Ski Theater in St. Petersburg, Russia on December eighteenth
of that year or December six under the old style calendar.
It followed Chakovsky's one act opera Yolanta, which had also
been the other part of this commission. One of the

(20:00):
criticisms of Chaikovsky'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. Zar Alexander the Third was a patron of
the arts and the theater, and a lot of the

(20:21):
work that was created during his reign involved dramatic sets
and costumes and the sorts of spectacles that these are
generally enjoyed. 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

(20:42):
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 trip Ack, especially in
Petipa's original notations. Tripp K was to be the show stopper,
suggesting the Russia was the best among nations. These dances

(21:03):
combine with others in Act two to suggest the idea
of many nations living together harmoniously under the rule of
one benevolent monarch, that is the sugar Plum Ferry along
with her Prince. Article in the journal Dance Research by
Damien Mayer also explores the idea that the use of
French songs and costumes inspired by fashion of the French

(21:26):
Revolutionary era allude to the alliance between France and Russia
that developed in the eighteen nineties. And Zar Alexander the
Third does seem to have liked this ballet. Chaikovsky 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. I love that.

(21:48):
A whole lot of kind words is 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 one and Act two almost felt

(22:10):
like two totally different ballets, neither of which made a
whole lot of sense. Some critics insisted that Act one
was barely a ballet at all. People mostly stood around
and pantomimed. In 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,

(22:33):
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's nothing
of this in The Nutcracker. There is not even a subject.
And also, the stage was full of children. At this

(22:56):
point in Russian ballet history, younger ballet students did not
usually shared 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. The focus

(23:17):
on children and 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 two, 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

(23:39):
whole opera and then 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. Overall, though,
Chaikowsky's score was praised, although sometimes that praise was a
little bit backhanded, as in quote in some it's a
pity that so much good music is expended on such nonsense,

(24:00):
so unworthy of attention, But the music in general is excellent.
Tchaikowski 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. One thing to note
here is that we don't actually have the choreography from

(24:20):
the Nutcrackers debut performances. Pedopies instructions to Chaikovsky 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
led the choreography to evolve over the Marinski Theaters to

(24:45):
ninety three 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. While the ballet's
reception was mixed to poor, its music became far more
pop puler, particularly the Nutcracker Sweet. Orchestras in Europe and
North America started performing the Nutcracker Sweet in the early

(25:07):
to mid eighteen nineties, and it became widely recognizable on
both sides of the Atlantic. It wasn't until decades later
that the Nutcracker became a winter holiday tradition, though you
will talk more about that. After a sponsor break after

(25:31):
the eight eighteen ninety three 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 nineteen o nine, and in
nineteen nineteen Alexander Gorsky staged a version that combined the

(25:52):
character of Clara with the sugar Plum Ferry for the
first time. Vasili Vinonen introduced new choreography in nine teen
thirty four, also casting adult dancers and what had originally
been children's thrills. But overall the Nutcrackers appearances on Russian
and then Soviet stages there's pretty spotty. Although the narrative

(26:14):
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 nineteen twenties, leading to the rise
of New Year's as a secular holiday. The Nutcracker was
performed outside of Russia and the Soviet Union for the

(26:35):
first time in nineteen thirty four. 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 nineteen eighteen. He had taken
the choreography for more than twenty ballets with him. They
had been recorded using a dance notation method that had

(26:57):
been developed by Vladimir ivanav It's Stepping Off. In nineteen forty,
the ballet Roust to Monte Carlo presented selections from The
Nutcracker while on tour in the US. Then Disney's Fantasia
debut in theaters on November thirteenth, nineteen forty. This film
was not a financial success, in part because World War

(27:19):
Two shut down movie theaters in Europe, but it is
credited with popularizing classical music in the United States, including
selections from the Nutcracker suite. Some of the Nutcracker pieces
in Fantasia include the Dance of the sugar Plump Ferry,
during which fairies flitter about, opening flowers and sending dew
drops down spider webs. Mushrooms twirl around. During the Chinese dance,

(27:44):
there are long tailed fish that gracefully swim around, and
coffee and thistles that very energetically danced during traypack. Although
neither the fish nor the mushrooms are human, they both
retain some of the exot size stereotype depictions that are
often part of the Nutcracker ballet. During the Chinese and

(28:05):
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 Plus Today, noting that
it quote includes negative depictions and or mistreatment of people

(28:25):
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. When
introducing the Nutcracker Sweet portion of Fantasia, narrator Deems Taylor
explains that the Nutcracker Sweet is part of a ballet
that wasn't much of a success and quote nobody performs

(28:49):
it nowadays. That was more or less true in but
today that sentence is hilarious. Four years after Fantasia, the
sand for Cisco Ballet staged the first US performance of
the full Nutcracker Ballet. The ballet's founder and choreographer William
Christensen's talked through ideas for it with choreographer George Balancheen

(29:13):
and Alexander Danilova of Ballet Russ. Christiansen had never actually
seen the full Nutcracker Ballet, and later said that these
conversations and particularly Balancings insights, had a huge influence on
the San Francisco production. Then, in nineteen fifty four, The
Nutcracker opened at the New York City Ballet with choreography

(29:34):
by co founder George Balancheen, whose name has been anglicized
from George Balanchivadza. He was born in St. Petersburg, Russia,
in nineteen o four, and he had studied at the
Imperial School of Ballet and the marin Ski Theater. He
appeared in productions of The Nutcracker before the Russian Revolution,
which means that he learned and observed choreography that had

(29:55):
started with Petepa and Ivenov back in the nineteenth century.
He also learned other versions by other choreographers before leaving
Russia in nineteen four. Lincoln Kirstein invited Balancheen to the
US in nineteen thirty three to establish the School of
American Ballet and the American Ballet Company. Kirstein and Balancheen
went on to establish the New York City Ballet in

(30:17):
nineteen In the New York City Ballet's nineteen fifty four
Nutcracker passed podcast subject Maria's Tall Chief danced to the
part of the sugar Plum Ferry. Tall Chief was a
citizen of o s Age Nation and is regarded as
the first prima ballerina in the United States. In this version,
the young protagonist name is Marie rather than Clara and Marie.

(30:38):
The Nutcracker prants and other roles in this first and
We're danced by almost forty children from the School of
American Ballet. This production was also one in which Treypack
features dancers dressed in candy stripes dancing with hoops. Although
Balancin's Nutcracker first opened on February second of nineteen fifty four,
it quickly became the heart of a special holiday ballet season,

(31:02):
and the New York City Ballet has performed it every
year since then. A lot of what made The Nutcracker
so reviled in Russia in had nearly the opposite effect
in the United States in ninety 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.

(31:23):
The audience response was less 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 seemed to celebrate values
like home and family and holiday cheer, and that was
not an accident. Balancheen and the rest of the creative

(31:44):
team at the New York City Ballet had understood that
their company desperately needed something that could have mass appeal,
and the Nutcracker wound up suiting that need extremely well.
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

(32:05):
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 of the U. S s
Are maintained a rivalry and competed with each other during
the Cold War was through dance and ballet, specifically, an
abridged version of the New York City Ballet's Nutcracker aired

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on CBS in nineteen fifty seven, and then a somewhat
more complete version aired the following year in Night, with
Balanchine in the role of drossel Meyer. In the ninety
eight 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

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isn't Christmas without a real old fashioned story of magic
and miracles. Two televised ballets, two years in a row,
established the Nutcracker as an invented tradition. It reminds me
a little bit of the Yes Virginia story that had
a similar trajectory. So Balancine's Nutcracker was huge for the

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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

(33:34):
dance critic Richard Buckle is that each Christmas quote, we
are all one nutcracker closer to death. 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

(33:54):
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. The popularity of
the nutcracker also goes beyond ballet. It's one of the
reasons why decorative nutcrackers ultimately spread beyond Germany, especially as

(34:15):
holiday decorations. In nineteen sixty one, 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. Sadly, the people who were most involved in
the original creation of the nutcracker did not live to

(34:37):
see this success and influence. Lev Ivanov died in nineteen
o one at the age of sixty seven, Ivan Vizlowski
died in nineteen o nine at the age of seventy four,
and Marius Petipa died in nineteen ten he was ninety
two at that point. All three of them outlived Pyotr Iliatchikovsky,
who died on November six eight or October twenty five

(35:00):
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 fifty three at
the time, and the Nutcracker was his last ballet. One
of the things that we've touched on a little bit

(35:21):
is that parts of the Nutcracker often involved racist stereotypes,
especially the national dances of Spanish or chocolate, Arabian or coffee,
Chinese or tea, and Russian or traypack. Trapac of course,
was meant to be a reflection of Russian ideals, including
bravery and physical and military prowess, especially in its original

(35:42):
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 weather, ballet companies staging the

(36:03):
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.
The Nutcracker has also proved itself to be almost infinitely adaptable.

(36:25):
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 Petaba and even
of there are so many others who are going to
list just a few examples. In the nineteen eighties, the

(36:47):
Pacific Northwest Ballet and choreographer Kent still wanted to return
to the spirit of E. T. A. Hoffman's original story.
To that end, they brought in Maurice Sendec to design
the sets and write the libretto for a news staging
of The Nutcracker. This became the Pacific Northwest Ballet's version
of The Nutcracker for about three decades, and it was

(37:07):
released as a film in nineties six. They also published
a translation of E. T. A. Hoffman's story as a
book that was translated by Ralph Mannheim and accompanied by
Senda's illustrations. A version called Hard Nut debuted in Brussels
in and it uses Tchaikovsky's score and is based on
the E. T. A. Hoffman story, but it is a

(37:30):
satiric comedy with choreography by Mark Morris and a production
designed based on the work of illustrator and cartoonist Charles Burns.
Harlem Nutcracker debuted in six choreographed by Donald Bird and
working off of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn's arrangement of
the Nutcracker suite. And in this ballet, Clara is a

(37:51):
widowed grandmother facing her first Christmas without her late husband.
Debbie Allen Dance Academy's Hot Chocolate Nutcracker incorporates all kinds
of front music and dance styles, with the rats narrating
the story. Parts of this are shown in the documentary
Dance Dreams Hot Chocolate Nutcracker. And then there are also

(38:11):
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 Matrushka doll and Russian folk figures like dead Morowats
and Snagaruchka. This ballet's heroine is known as Masha, which

(38:34):
is a Russian derivative of the name Marie. Oh, Nutcracker,
We'll talk about some more Nutcracker stuff in the behind
the scenes, because so much I have experience as an
audience member and you have experienced as a dancer. Yep uh.
Do you have listener mail in the meantime? I do.
This is from Larissa. Larissa said, I wanted to write

(38:56):
in to at least share a picture of my dog
with you two. Then saw these episodes while picking something
to listen to on my drive home from work. I
knew I had to write in. I will pause and
say the episodes in question are the iditar Bell episodes.
I'm going to return to the email. I grew up
in Titusville, Pennsylvania. This is one thing I did not
miss in history class, and Titusville itself, the Tarbell House

(39:20):
still stands, and last I knew you can book tea
parties there. The museum is interactive which depicts the timeline
of the oil boom and has engines and oil rigs
in the park. Drake's Well is also replicated to exactly
the original second one. The very first one ignited from
a lantern, so no photograph for recreation. The hills of

(39:41):
the area were just Derek's no trees. I know there
are photos of this by John Mather. Also, it was
interesting to hear the Tarbells lived in Rouseville. I had
never seen a historical marker like we have all over
the area that right in that small area is the
oldest still producing oil well. I was so happy to
see this come up as a topic. No one knows
about our little area. And I'm sure a future idea

(40:03):
could be Titus fill itself and or pit hole the
ghost town. Uh. And then we got a picture of
Laris's dog, Landing, who was three years old and as
a pit bullterrior mixing is adorable. Thank you so much
for this email and the picture of Larissa. If you
would like to send us an email or at History
podcast at I heart radio dot com. And we're also

(40:25):
all over social media at missed in History. That's where
you'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. And you
can subscribe to our show on the I heart Radio
app or wherever you like to get your podcasts. Stuff
you Missed in History Class is a production of I
heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit

(40:48):
the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
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