The Nutcracker (1892)

The Nutcracker, Op. 71, is a two-act "fairy ballet" written by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in 1892, set on Christmas Eve in a child's imagination at the foot of a Christmas tree. The scenario is based on E. T. A. Hoffmann's short story The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, published in 1816. Marius Petipa, with whom Tchaikovsky had collaborated three years previously on The Sleeping Beauty, accompanied by Lev Ivanov, was the ballet's first choreographer. Although the full and produced The Nutcracker ballet was not as successful as Tchaikovsky's 20-minute Nutcracker Suite, which premiered nine months earlier, The Nutcracker quickly became popular.

It has been performed by various ballet companies, particularly in North America, since the late 1960s. The Nutcracker accounts for over 40% of major American ballet companies' annual ticket sales. Several film adaptations of Hoffmann's story have used the ballet's score. Tchaikovsky's score has become one of his most well-known works. The score is notable for its use of the celesta, an instrument that the composer had previously used in his far lesser known symphonic ballad The Voyevoda.

While the original ballet was not judged a unified performance, the score was deemed the best of Tchaikovsky's ballets by the Petersburg Gazette. The Nutcracker became one of the most famous ballets in the classical canon as a result of its several incarnations over the course of the twentieth century. Indeed, The Nutcracker continues to provide vital ticket sales and performance experience for ballet companies and schools across the United States.