Christmas Eve would not be complete without attending a performance of the late Romantic Russian ballet, The Nutcracker, by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893).
'Invasion of the nutcrackers'
There are a number of online resources which have been reviewed in Intute which relate to Christmas and Yuletide and especially The Nutcracker, including:
After its opening Russian performance in 1892, the piece was first fully performed abroad in England in 1934. By the 1960s, it had become an international seasonal favourite. Part of the ballet’s popularity rests on its portrayal of two worlds within Christmas. Act I presents and image of hearth, home and family traditionally associated with the Christian holiday. Yet the holiday originally absorbed ancient winter solstice festivals, evoking dreams of birth and regeneration after the shortest day of the year. Act II’s romantic adventures and orientalist visions, which awake inside the domestic symbols of Christmas, echo this less familiar side of Yuletide celebrations. The ballet also laces its story of a little girl, Clara Stahlbaum, growing up and seeking her Nutcracker Hussar prince, with themes of cosmopolitan fantasy. The music maintains Western European forms with Eastern European undertones and melodies. Inside its formal composition, the ballet’s musical aesthetic also refers to Iberia, the Middle East and Asia. In the Second Act Spanish, Arab, Chinese and Russian dancers represent the mix of traditions that Christmas subliminally incorporates. In Act II’s voyage to the Land of the Sugar Plum Fairy, these dancers symbolize the spirit of exotic sweets and once-rare imported foods, such as chocolate, tea, coffee and marzipan, which were served with more familiar fare at Christmastime.
Some of the lead dancers of The Nutcracker, Royal Ballet performance, 18 December 2006
Of course, the other dimension of The Nutcracker is dual subjectivity: the toy soldier and inanimate snowflakes and flowers all come alive – and mice and rats become sentient. The ballet is a fairy-tale of love and fear discovered in Christmas Eve’s aura of anticipation. Clara’s transition from childhood on this night is a magical transformation. She becomes conscious of a wild world inside her own unconsciousness. It is this moment of awakening and emancipation within a dream that animates foods, mundane objects, and creatures, allowing them to reveal their secret existences and true natures.
New York City Ballet dancer Rachel Rutherford
The 2007 production of The Nutcracker, Canton Ballet, Canton, Ohio
Here, Romantic and Gothic ideas resist a rationalist Enlightenment message: Herr Drosslmeyer, who constructs the Nutcracker, is a clockmaker and inventor in the Enlightenment tradition – but he may also be a magician. Alexandre Dumas the elder (1802-1870) adapted the ballet’s plot from an 1816 short story by Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann (1776-1822), “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King”, (“Nußknacker und Mausekönig”). The full German text of the story is available on the website of Project Gutenberg. Hoffmann notoriously loved dual realities and characters with double lives. His contrast between wild, natural and unconscious worlds on the one hand, and modern technology and pedestrian daily life on the other, are trademarks of Romanticism. The German branch of this early nineteenth century movement was epitomized by the construction of Castle Neuschwanstein in Bavaria. The castle literally embodies Wagnerian fantasy; yet the builders of this re-imagined medieval royal retreat used all the latest construction techniques, electricity and modern conveniences. In 1940s’ America, Walt Disney used the castle as a symbol of both imagination and progress.
Neuschwanstein at night
Intute provides many reviews of online sources that discuss the evolution of Romanticism up to the present day, from Walt Disney (1901-1966), to Angela Carter (1940-1992), to cyberpunk and steampunk fiction and cinema:
Image credits:
- Invasion of the Nutcrackers – Photograph of nutcrackers in the German Market, Manchester, reproduced by kind permission of photographer perseverando (Flickr), all rights reserved;
- Some of the lead dancers of The Nutcracker, Royal Ballet performance, 18 December 2006, reproduced by kind permission of photographer zxDaveM (Flickr), all rights reserved;
- New York City Ballet dancer Rachel Rutherford, reproduced by kind permission of photographer mvartphoto (Flickr), all rights reserved;
- The 2007 production of The Nutcracker, Canton Ballet, Canton, Ohio, USA, reproduced by kind permission of photographer mw_barath (Flickr), all rights reserved;
- Neuschwanstein at night, Germany, reproduced by kind permission of photographer exchman (Flickr), all rights reserved.
