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The Nutcracker: America's Favorite Ballet
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12007 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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12 / 1987 |
2,848 Words |
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Don McDonagh
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America's favorite ballet, without question, is The Nutcracker. No matter if the temperature is a balmy seventy degrees or a bone-chilling ten below when Christmas rolls around, The Nutcracker is everywhere in the land. Over 150 different productions are presented yearly by large and small ballet companies, and the public has come to regard the ballet as a Christmas tradition. To many, it wouldn't be Christmas without taking the children to see The Nutcracker.
Producing the ballet has become more of a necessity than a choice for many artistic directors. Almost all companies rely heavily on their Nutcracker performances to provide a substantial portion of their annual earned income. The amount varies between 25 and 65 percent of total box-office revenues. That percentage does not include the revenue from dolls, books, T-shirts, mugs, and other items sold at theaters. The ballet has also become a lightning rod that attracts talented students to the individual company's school. Parents know well that a ballet master casts all children's parts from youngsters enrolled in his school. The Nutcracker also serves as an introduction to ballet for many people. Future subscribers to the companies' regular repertory seasons are recruited from their ranks.
Tchaikovsky's score
Audiences never lose their affection for The Nutcracker, returning again and again, year after year, to enjoy Tchaikovsky's beautiful score, the glittering spectacle, and the performing elan of dancers from the top principals down to the smallest child. The Nutcracker phenomenon is unique; No other ballet so consistently brings audiences into the theater and back again in such large numbers.
The Nutcracker's success was not instantaneous, however. When the ballet was first performed by the Imperial Russian Ballet in St. Petersburg on December 17, 1892, the audience was cool and the ballet was considered a failure. The production was kept in the repertory of the Maryinsky Company, but, at times, as many as three years would pass between performances. It was not until 1934 that the first full-length Nutcracker was seen in Western Europe, when Nicholas Sergeyev, a former director of the Maryinsky, staged it for the Sadler's Wells (subsequently Royal) Ballet in London.
The ballet's music, on the other hand, particularly the dances drawn from act 2 and presented as The Nutcracker Suite, rapidly achieved popularity in the concert repertory. The ballet itself came to the United States little by little.
The first to arrive was Snowflakes, a divertissement choreographed after the original by Ivan Clustine, ballet master to the Anna Pavlova Company. He selected the waltz from the end of act 1 that served as a vehicle for Pavlova and a corps de ballet of young women in 1915.
The Ballets Russes, under Vassily de Basil's direction, presented one-act condensations of The Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake in the 1930s. Oddly enough, the company always included the Sugar Plum Fairy solo from act 2 in its Beauty, thus introducing another part to American audiences. In 1940, a rival Ballets Russes company under the direction of Serge Denham offered a condensed one-act version of The Nutcracker choreographed by Alexandra Fedorova. All three companies had toured the United
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