You are cordially invited to
send a free Nutcracker postcard. Worth every penny. Introduction
Maurice Sendak's introduction to E.T.A. Hoffmann's Nutcracker
Shopping Amazon through this link benefits the Wes Stoops
Memorial Scholarship!
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 
MY IMMEDIATE REACTION to the request that I design Nutcracker was negative. The offer came early in 1981 from Kent Stowell, artistic director of the Pacific Northwest Ballet. I was flattered, but my reasons for saying no were plentiful and precise. To begin with, who in the world needed another Nutcracker? The mandatory Christmas tree and Candyland sequences were enough to sink my spirits completely. And the fantastical subject mixed generously with children seemed, paradoxically, too suited to me, too predictable. I didn't want to be suited to the confectionery goings-on of this, I thought, most bland and banal of ballet productions. Finally, and most seriously, after only three operas and one off-Broadway musical for children, I didn't have a clue about how to approach a ballet. Where would I find the time to design a giant production-two full acts and over 180 costumes?
Of course I did it. We did it together. Most of my doubts and worries were put to rest when Kent and I met for the first time early in 1981 in New York City. I liked him immediately for not wanting me to do Nutcracker for all the obvious reasons but rather because he wished me to join him in a leap into the unknown. He suggested we abandon the predictable Nutcracker and find a fresh version that did honor to Hoffmann, Tchaikovsky, and ourselves.
Later that year Kent invited me to Seattle to see the company's old Nutcracker. By then I had fallen in love with the project and after that Christmas of 1981, I set to work in earnest.
There is no question of the ballet's appeal; as far as most audiences are concerned it works even in an indifferent production. But, like many before us, we felt that the ballet needed renovation. What is potentially dramatic in Act One is dissipated in the carnival atmosphere of Act Two. How to dramatically bridge the two acts and focus fierce attention on our heroine Clara (Marie, in the book) became the exciting goal.
My first step was to return to the source: E.T.A. Hoffmann who, in 1816, wrote the amazing long short story called The Nutcracker and the Mouse King. I was astonished at my difficulty in locating an English version of this most well known of his tales. When I finally did find it in The Best Tales of E. T.A. Hoffmann (Dover, 1967), I read the story greedily. The result of that reading was confusion. There was a vast difference between the original tale and what took place on the stage.
Jack Anderson's book The Nutcracker Ballet helped unravel some of the mystery. The scenario of the ballet is a hybrid concocted in 1891 by Ivan Alexandrovitch Vsevolojsky, director of the Imperial Theater in St. Petersburg, and Marius Petipa, the choreographer, both of whom had been Tchaikovsky's collaborators on The Sleeping Beauty.
Rather than turning directly to Hoffmann, these artists based their scenario on a popular French version of the tale by Alexandre Dumas, pere, The Nutcracker of Nuremberg. When Vsevolojsky simplified the Dumas even further for the stage, it emerged at a dangerous 
distance from Hoffmann. Why, one wonders, did these men ever choose such an unlikely candidate in the first place? The original is too long and fun of complicated digressions to have made a coherent ballet. But their version, familiar to audiences today, is smoothed out, bland, and utterly devoid not only of difficulties but of the weird, dark qualities that make it something of a masterpiece.
Tchaikovsky, understandably disappointed in the scenario, proceeded to compose a score that in overtone and erotic suggestion is happily closer to Hoffmann than Dumas. His music, bristling with implied action, has a subtext alive with wild child cries and belly noises. It is rare and genuine and does justice to the private world of children. One can, after all, count on the instincts of a genius.
The problem dramatically, as Kent and I saw it, was that the vital subplot, the tale within a tale in Hoffmann's story, was entirely missing from the ballet. "The Story of the Hard Nut" gives the fairy tale dramatic
sense and needed psychological meaning. Its absence in the ballet leaves the center critically vacant. We were not so foolish or vain as to imagine that we could totally solve this problem, but we were determined to incorporate as much as we could of the entire original story into our scenario. This was not a matter of pedantry or even of faithfulness to Hoffmann. It was to enable us to bring the middle of the ballet to life.
There are odd, magical means by which one eases oneself or talks oneself into a project. When I began Nutcracker I was beady-eyed, looking for a proper sign.
It came from Herr E.T.A. Hoffmann himself, who out of love for that most lovable and best of all artists, Mozart, changed one of his middle names to Amadeus. Tchaikovsky adored Mozart and had written a number of compositions in homage to this master and my own particular hero. So there he was, smack in the middle of this production, the great papa, so to speak, of all involved.
Although my early storyboards and rough cardboard models gave me no hint as to where and when I would set my Nutcracker, I began to realize that it had long been set in my unconscious. The magic triumvirate of Mozart, Hoffmann, and Schinkel, the great nineteenth-century German architect, had already led me to place the ballet in the period they shared, 1790-1830. The rich, exotic, yet strict lines of neoclassic design and costume perfectly suited my vision of Clara and her world.
Kent and I were drawn to Clara in different ways. I endowed her with the wisdom and strength I conjure up to endow all my children and then surrounded her with a minefield of problems. Kent saw her as a child older than Hoffmann's seven-year-old Marie. Together we created a prepubescent twelve-year-old, all nerves and curiosity devouring the world with her eyes and imagination, just awaking to her first wonderful, fearful, erotic sensations. The stage became her half-real, half-nightmare battleground. The drama grew naturally as we watched Clara, frightened yet exuberant, cross that battleground.
Because there was neither time, music, nor space to tell the whole complicated story we reduced it to a brief, symbolic, and, we hope, effective episode. It was essential that the peculiar relationship between Clara and Drosselmeier be clearly drawn. The little scene we invented chillingly encapsulated Clara's nightmare vision of that half-child, half-man. 
It introduced Princess Pirlipat of the tale within a tale and made crucial connections between her and Clara and the Nutcracker prince. To accomplish all this in roughly three minutes we desperately needed more music.
On one of my working trips to Seattle I enthusiastically introduced Kent to Tchaikovsky's opera The Queen of Spades and pointed out a moment in the opera, a charmingly concocted pastiche of Mozart, that I felt might work beautifully. As always, without a single false flourish, Kent seized this critical moment and brought it to theatrical life. And so Mozart appeared twice in our Nutcracker, graphically as a bust on top of Clara's toy cabinet and musically as a divertissement in the middle of the Stahlbaum's Christmas party.
For our finale, Kent and I firmly decided against the most obligatory of all obligatory scenes, The Land of Sweets. In Hoffmann it is only a short, ironical interlude. The spirit of our scenario led elsewhere. But where? After some missteps I consulted with Frank Corsaro, the ingenious stage director, my collaborator and teacher.
He forced me simply to face the inner logic of our script and to march bravely where it led us-to an eighteenth-century seraglio, full of exaggerated glee and erotic conceits typical of that period. Of course, there is no seraglio in Hoffmann's tale, but once again Kent and I chose to follow the quintessential, rather than the literal, Hoffmann.
Fidelity to Hoffmann's spirit has also been my guide in this illustrated version of Nutcracker. In changing hats from designer to illustrator I have been faced with a curious dilemma. After all, there are 
whole sequences in the tale itself that never appear on the stage. Rather than adjust these designs to fit the book, I decided to completely illustrate "The Story of the Hard Nut." Because of this decision the pictures for 
this book are composed of two separate entities. There are the designs and costumes from the ballet version and then the fresh pictures done specifically for the tale. In addition, there are a few to animate the original stage designs and a few more that I could not or would not resist doing. This may explain some disparity in style and tone from section to section. I hope that despite this I have done some justice to Hoffmann and, above all, have not betrayed the mad spirit of his mad story.
One last word concerning the translation. To quote E. F. Bleiler, editor of the Dover edition, "(Hoffmann) translators all too often have rendered him into an English that is complex, curious and sometimes tedious. This. . .resulted in the loss of three of his greatest gifts. . .nervous energy, hard clarity of expression and narrative flow. . .This present volume. . .is best considered an interim edition, prepared to satisfy a need until something better emerges." When Crown Publishers invited Ralph Manheim to translate this work, something far better emerged. E.T.A. Hoffmann's The Nutcracker and the Mouse King has finally been brought fully and faithfully to life in English. I feel fortunate to be allied with this literary event.
The premiere of Nutcracker in December 1983, in Seattle, was a superb moment for Kent, the company, and me. While we see the flaws and wince at the near misses, we are satisfied that our individual creative selves have found a comfortable and handsome partnership in the vast, unwieldy work. It is, from the opening bars of Marie's dream, to the unpredictable apotheosis, truly our Nutcracker.
Maurice Sendak
April 1984
Ridgefield, Connecticut
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
Does Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker make sense to you?
Search:
Keywords:
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.
Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann, original name Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann (1776-1822)
Russian Dance - Trepak
Miniature Overture
March
Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy
Russian Dance - Trepak
Waltz of the Flowers
You are cordially invited to send a free Nutcracker postcard. Worth every penny.