You are cordially invited to
send a free Nutcracker postcard
. Worth every penny.
Does the Nutcracker ballet make sense to you?
What's the story behind this weird Drosselmeier dude?
Did you know Mozart had as much of an effect on the Nutcracker's history as
Tchaikovsky?
Do you find the Nutcracker ballet entertaining and romantic but lacking a plot,
like
Titanic
?
Do you find it like the Bobby-in-the-shower scene from
Dallas
and the series finale of
Roseanne
? -- it was nothing but a dream!? What a gyp!
AND
Do you find the second act with all the sugar plumming a little sicky sweet?
As to the other questions:
What's the story behind this weird Drosselmeier dude? ~~ Can't give away the
secret except to say it deals directly with sausage and why the Nutcracker is a
nutcracker.
Why a nutcracker? Why not a steadfast tin soldier or another toy more commonly
given to a child? ~~ Can't give away the secret except to say it deals
directly with sausages, cats, a rotten princess, and a death sentence from a
king who craved lard.
Do you find it entertaining but lacking a plot? The lovely book has a plot,
and once read, it fills in the ballet's gaps.
Did you know Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had fans in both Hoffman and Tchaikovsky?
So much so that Hoffmann changed his middle name to "Amadeus." In fact, Mozart
has a
profound
effect on the Pacific Northwest Ballet's Nutcracker production, and
the book
but
it is only 2.5% musical -- the rest is completely visual! It's facsinating!
You've just got to read the book!
"It was nothing but a dream!? What a gyp!"
That's what the heroine, Marie, not
Clara
, thought too! But was it just a dream?...
Maurice Sendak's introduction to E.T.A. Hoffmann's Nutcracker
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E.T.A Hoffmann's "Nutcracker" illustrated by Maurice Sendak
Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker / Gergiev, Kirov Orchestra
Nutcracker: The Motion Picture (1986)
Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker" on the Web
MUSIC is the most ROMANTIC of all the ARTS - one might almost say, the only
genuinely romantic one - for its sole subject is the INFINITE. Music discloses
to man an unknown realm, a world in which
he leaves behind him all definite feelings to surrender himself to an
inexpressible longing.
--
Hoffmann, Ernst Theodor Wilhelm (Amadeus)
Have you ever watched a performance of said ballet and wondered what bee got
into the Mouse King's royal bonnet? I mean, what is his problem?
Why a nutcracker? Why not a steadfast tin soldier or another toy more commonly
given to a child?
Maurice Sendak found the whole idea way too sweet and cliche when Kent Stowell
of the Pacific Northwest Ballett approached him to design costumes and sets for
a rejuvenation of the yuletide prerequisite ballet.
But a return to E.T.A. Hoffmann's original
The Nutcracker and the Mouse King
made all the difference, Sendak says in the introduction to his illustrated
version of the overlooked gem.
What's the Mouse King's royal problem? ~~ Can't give away the secret except to
say it deals directly with why the Nutcracker is a nutcracker. It's not fair
to the Nutcracker, but can't say I blame the Mouse King.
The Story of the Hard Nut, Part One
The Story of the Hard Nut, Part Two
The Story of the Hard Nut, Part Three
The Story of the Hard Nut, Part Four
E.T.A. Hoffmann's Nutcracker at our house
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This is but one of the many Nutcracker CDs available; others are priced at a
steal!
The sets and costumes are Sendak's; the company, the Pacific Northwest Ballet;
the plot, once again, a hack and slash of Hoffmann's treasure. This particular
production toys with the sexual awakening of 13-year-old Clara and paints
Drosselmeier as being infatuated with her, but not in a way obvious to
children. It must be said, this production does away with the tired Land of
Sweets -- huzzah; and the music is still Tchaikovsky's.
Russian Dance - Trepak
Miniature Overture
March
Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy
Russian Dance - Trepak
Waltz of the Flowers
Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky(1840 - 1893)'s
biography and works
:
Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky {chy-kawf'-skee}. The eminent Russian composer Peter
Ilich Tchaikovsky was born on May 7 (N.S.), 1840, in a settlement adjacent to
the Kama-Votkinsk Metal Works (managed by his father) in the Ural Mountains.
The first mention of his involvement with music appears in a letter of 1844
that reports him as having helped compose a song, "Mama's in Petersburg."
At home he heard folk songs, popular arias, and romances sung by his mother,
and pieces played by a mechanical organ, among them excerpts from Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart's Don Giovanni. (Mozart would remain Tchaikovsky's most beloved
composer.) Piano lessons, started about the age of five, continued in Saint
Petersburg, where he entered boarding school in 1848.
From 1850 to 1859 he attended the School of Jurisprudence, where he assisted in
a choir conducted by Gavriil Lomakin and studied piano with Rudolph Kundinger
and harmony with Kundinger's brother. Assigned on graduation to the Ministry of
Justice, Tchaikovsky continued to be drawn to music, and in 1861 he began
classes sponsored by the Russian Music Society. The year after, he left his job
and entered the just-founded Saint Petersburg Conservatory. Working zealously
under Anton Rubinstein and Nikolai Zaremba, he received a Silver Medal for his
graduation cantata on Johann Schiller's An die Freude in December 1865.
Tchaikovsky taught theory in Moscow, joining the faculty of the new Moscow
Conservatory when it opened in September 1866. During his 11 years there, he
composed his Piano Concerto no. 1 (1875), the ballet Swan Lake (1876), four
operas, three symphonies, and many smaller works. He also established close
ties with the composers of the nationalist group known as "The Five,"
especially Mily Balakirev and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov; the critic Vladimir
Stasov called him the "sixth member of their circle."
Marriage in July 1877 to Antonina Miliukova triggered an emotional crisis,
perhaps related to his homosexuality, that brought him near suicide. He fled
Moscow in a state of turmoil but managed to finish three masterpieces--the
Fourth Symphony, the Violin Concerto, and the opera Eugene Onegin--before May
1878, when his wife agreed to separation (they were never divorced). An annuity
from Nadezhda von Meck, granted during his crisis, allowed him to quit (1878)
teaching. His association with von Meck, begun in an exchange of letters about
a commission in 1876, was sustained in voluminous correspondence over 13 years,
although they never met. From 1878 to 1885, Tchaikovsky lived sometimes in
Russia, sometimes in western Europe. His reputation grew with the Capriccio
italien (1880), the 1812 overture (1880), and two more operas, as well as the
Liturgy (1878) and the Vesper Service (1881). During his last years he lived in
or near Moscow. In 1888 Tsar Alexander III granted him a yearly pension.
Tchaikovsky's fame, as both conductor and composer, spread as the result of a
series of international tours, which brought him to the United States in 1891.
He continued to compose--the ballets Sleeping Beauty (1889) and Nutcracker
(1892), the Fifth (1888), Sixth (1893), and Manfred (1885) symphonies, and
three final operas, including the powerful and theatrical The Queen of Spades
(1890). Younger composers emulated him, among them Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov
and, later, Sergei Rachmaninoff. On Nov. 6 (N. S.), 1893, a few days after
conducting the premier of his Sixth Symphony, Tchaikovsky died in Saint
Petersburg. Although it was reported that he died of cholera, some scholars now
believe that his death was in fact a suicide, the result of a threat to reveal
his liaison with a young Russian nobleman.
Tchaikovsky's lyric gift owes much to Russian folk song, which he quotes (First
Piano Concerto, Second and Fourth symphonies) or imitates (First Symphony,
Second String Quartet), and to the 19th-century Russian salon song, whose
traits permeate his vocal melody (songs and romances, Eugene Onegin) and even
infuse his instrumental themes (Fifth and Sixth symphonies). The expressive
pathos of his themes depends on abundant use of suspensions and anticipations,
which also pervade his rich harmonies.
Malcolm Hamrick Brown
Bibliography:
Brown, David, Tchaikovsky, 3 vols. (1978-92)
;
Garden, Edward, Tchaikovsky (1973)
;
Newmarch, Rosa, Tchaikovsky: His Life and Works with Extracts from His Writings (1900; repr. 1990)
;
Poznansky, Alexander, Tchaikovsky: The Quest for the Inner Man (1992)
;
Strutte, Wilson, Tchaikovsky: His Life and Times, rev. ed. (1981)
;
Volkoff, Vladimir, Tchaikovsky (1975)
;
Warrack, John, Tchaikovsky (1973)
.
You are cordially invited to send a free Nutcracker postcard . Worth every penny.