Nutcracker Premieres: Ballet Becomes Holiday Tradition

Critics savaged it, audiences were lukewarm, and the choreographer called it a failure. On December 18, 1892, The Nutcracker premiered at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg with music by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and choreography by Lev Ivanov. The ballet that would become the most performed and commercially important work in the classical repertoire was dismissed at birth. Tchaikovsky was ambivalent about the project. Commissioned by the director of the Imperial Theatres, the ballet was based on Alexandre Dumas's adaptation of E.T.A. Hoffmann's dark fairy tale "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King." Tchaikovsky found the story thin and the staging requirements frustrating. He composed the score while grieving his sister Alexandra, and musicologists hear that sorrow in the music's darker passages. The premiere received mixed reviews. Critics praised the score but found the choreography uninspired and the second act dramatically static. Child performers in leading roles limited technical complexity. Tchaikovsky's score, now considered a supreme achievement of ballet music, drew the most consistent praise, particularly the innovative celesta in the "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy." The Nutcracker remained a modest fixture of the Russian repertoire for decades. Its transformation happened in America. George Balanchine's 1954 production for the New York City Ballet reimagined the staging with lavish sets and a grand party scene, turning it into a holiday spectacle. American companies discovered that annual Nutcracker performances generated enough revenue to fund the rest of the season. Today The Nutcracker accounts for roughly forty percent of annual ticket revenue for many American ballet companies. Tchaikovsky did not live to see its triumph, dying less than eleven months after the premiere.