The Nutcracker

The nutcracker form of decorative are in the form of wooden carvings of a soldier, knight, king, or other profession have existed since at least the 15th century. These nutcrackers portray a person with a large mouth which the operator opens by lifting a lever in the back of the figurine.

Modern nutcrackers in this style serve mostly for decoration, mainly 

at Christmas time, a season of which they have long been a traditional

symbol. The ballet The Nutcracker derives its name from this festive holiday 

decoration. The original nutcrackers were first seen in Germany and were

thought to have guardian-like properties because of their strong appearance.

The origin of the Nutcracker, a classic Christmas Story, is a fairy tale ballet in 

two acts centered on a family’s Christmas Eve celebration.

The first performance of the Christmas ballet was held as a double premiere

 together with Tchaikovsky’s last opera, Iolanta, around the Christmas holiday

 season on December 18 [O.S. December 6] 1892, at the Imperial Mariinsky 

Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia. It is generally agreed that Lev Ivanov,

 Second Balletmaster to the St. Petersburg Imperial Theatres, worked closely 

with Marius Petipa, Premier Maître de Ballet of the St. Petersburg Imperial 

Theatres and widely regarded as the Father of Russian Ballet, to create the 

holiday ballet. It was conducted by Riccardo Drigo, with Antoinetta Dell-Era as

 the Sugar Plum Fairy, Pavel Gerdt as her Prince, Stanislava Belinskaya as 

Clara/Masha, Sergei Legat as the Nutcracker Prince, and Timofei Stukolkin as

 Uncle Drosselmeyer.


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