Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

• Born: May 7, 1840 in Votkinsk, Russia
  
• Died: November 6, 1893 in St. Petersburg, Russa

Pas de Deux from The Nutcracker

• Composed: 1891–1892
  
• Premiere: December 18, 1892 in St. Petersburg, conducted by Riccardo Drigo.
  
• Duration: approx. 6 minutes

Late in 1890, Tchaikovsky was approached by Prince Ivan Vselvolozhsky, director of the Imperial Theater in St. Petersburg, and Marius Petipa, the French dancer and choreographer who created an unprecedented standard of ballet production and execution after settling in Russia in 1847, to compose a full evening’s entertainment — a one-act opera and a ballet. The subject for the opera was to be of Tchaikovsky’s choice (he picked King René’s Daughter by the Danish dramatist Hendrik Herz, which the composer’s brother Modest turned into a libretto titled Iolanthe), but that for the ballet was specified as E.T.A. Hoffmann’s story of The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, one of the most popular tales in Russia at the time. Tchaikovsky had read Hoffmann’s Nutcracker in 1882 “with great pleasure,” and he accepted the commission. The premiere of the new ballet and opera were scheduled for December 1892, but Tchaikovsky introduced some excerpts from The Nutcracker at a concert he conducted in St. Petersburg on March 19th. The suite of eight numbers he extracted from the complete score was so successful that five of the movements were immediately encored. The premiere of the full ballet on December 18th, though lavishly mounted, fared less well. Casting changes and the public’s increasing familiarity with subject and score soon led to The Nutcracker’s wide acceptance, however, and it has remained one of the most popular of all ballets and a Christmas tradition around the world.

The ballet opens with a Christmas party at the home of the President of the Town Council. The door bursts open and Clara and Fritz, his children, run in, accompanied by some of their playmates. Clara receives a giant Nutcracker as a Christmas gift. When the guests depart and everyone else is in bed, she steals back into the living room, where the Nutcracker springs to life and leads a battalion of gingerbread men in battle against an invading army of mice. The Nutcracker is confronted by the Mouse King himself, and he appears about to meet his fate when Clara hurls her slipper at the rodent-monster and kills him. The mice, leaderless, flee, and the Nutcracker is transformed into a gallant Prince. As reward for saving his life, he invites Clara to visit his kingdom. She accepts.

Act II is set in the great hall of the castle, where the Prince describes to the assembled court how Clara saved his life. At a sign from the Sugar-Plum Fairy, a sumptuous banquet appears. Clara is ushered to a throne at the head of the table, and a divertissement in her honor begins. The Pas de Deux included in the entertainment comprises four sections: Dance of the Prince and the Sugar-Plum Fairy; a Tarantella for the Prince alone; Dance of the Sugar-Plum Fairy, with its famous solo for celesta; and Coda, for both partners.

—Dr. Richard E. Rodda