The History of The Nutcracker Ballet

In 1891, world renowned choreographer, Marius Petipa commissioned Peter Tchaikovsky to compose the music for Alexandre Dumas’s adaptation of E.T.A. Hoffman’s tale “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King.” Its first performance in 1892 was a complete failure – its critics and audience disliked it. However, since then, The Nutcracker has been the most widely performed ballet in the world. Almost every ballet company from Australia to Europe and Asia to America performs the The Nutcracker during the holiday season. The reason being, in 1954, George Balanchine, yet another world renowned choreographer, created a new production of The Nutcracker. If you’ve seen The Nutcracker, it was most likely a version based on Balanchine’s.

The Synopsis of The Nutcracker