The Nutcracker and the Mouse King is the most famous tale of the German romantic writer Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann. Two elements reigned in Hoffmann's work - literature and music. Perhaps that is why his works attracted the attention of composers - Jacques Offenbach, Leo Delibes, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. It was Tchaikovsky who managed to raise The Nutcracker to new heights of popularity, creating an inimitable fairy-tale ballet on its basis.
Hoffmann's life has never been particularly happy. When the future writer was only 3 years old, his parents divorced, and the boy was brought up by his maternal grandmother and uncle. At the insistence of his uncle, Hoffmann chose a legal career, although he was constantly eager to leave it and earn a living by writing.
Two worlds in the work of Hoffmann
Nevertheless, the writer worked most of his life in the offices of the judicial department. In his free time, he enthusiastically studied music, and at night he wrote fairy tales, in which eerie events often took place. Almost all of his works are based on the opposition of two bordering worlds. One of them is the prosaic world of German philistinism, the other is the world of fairy tales and magic. Hoffmann's characters are the same dreamers and romantics, as he himself was, striving to escape from the daily routine, to escape into an alluring and mysterious fairy-tale world. Someone, like the student Anselm from the first work of the writer "The Golden Pot", this flight leads to the acquisition of personal happiness, but for someone, like for another student Nathaniel from the short story "The Sandman", it turns into madness and death.
The same theme of "double world" is found on the pages of the fairy tale "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King". It takes place in the usual German city of Dresden, whose residents are preparing to celebrate Christmas. The young dreamer Marie receives a funny toy from her godfather - the Nutcracker. From this moment, real miracles begin. The Nutcracker, of course, turns out to be an enchanted prince who, with the help of Marie, manages to defeat the evil mouse king. After that, he leads his savior to the beautiful Puppet Kingdom, the princess of which she is destined to become.
Tchaikovsky's ballet "The Nutcracker"
In December 1892, the premiere of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker took place at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg. In the original version of the libretto, its main character was named Clara (for Hoffmann this is the name of Marie's favorite doll), later the plot of the ballet was closer to the perception of the Russian audience, and the girl began to be called Masha.
The wonderful Christmas ballet is still loved by both young and adult audiences. On the stage of opera and ballet theaters, not a single New Year's holidays can do without him. Tchaikovsky's music began to be practically identified with Hoffmann's fairy tale. It is not for nothing that she sounds almost in every of the numerous adaptations of The Nutcracker.
