Topic Research: The Nutcracker

After reading The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, an article that I had found in last weeks assignment, this article portrayed the story in a way I had never heard of before.  In the article it goes into a huge backstory about how nutcrackers became they way they are and why they look the way they do.  I personally didn't care of this version, but there is definitely some good ideas I could pull from if I decided to retell it for my project.

I then clicked on an article that was linked in the one I just read entitled simply The Nutcracker.   What drew my attention to this article is that it was more about the successful and famous ballet version of the story that is composed by Tchaikovsky.  This article had really awesome history of the ballet and its first performances and how it has transformed into what it is today.   While reading I came up with the idea to possibly retell the story from a ballerina dancing the show's point of view.  Shes dancing and when it's time for the Mouse King and Nutcracker to come out suddenly she is transported and its no longer just a ballet but real life, and by the end of the story she is transported back to the stage with a roaring audience.  This idea is much like how Marie (or Clara in some versions) is whisked away to the magic castle and then is magically brought back by the end of the story wondering "Was it just a dream?' Although in this version it has a little twist. 

I wanted to also look into the history of the Mouse King and how his character was developed so I looked into another article that I had found during last weeks assignment.  This article was entitled "No Sugar Plums: The Dark Romantic Roots of The Nutcracker".  I'm not going to lie, that title along gets me super excited! Apparently E.T.A. Hoffman (the original author of The Nutcracker) has written a lot of dark stories, one in particular being about evil inventors that create a robot girl- which get this- is the inspiration for the famous ballet Coppelia! My mind was blown.  Anyway back to the Nutcracker, in Hoffman's original text it was much darker that what it is now.  The imagination of Marie becomes much lighter as well as her family, hence the change from Marie to Clara as it is in most ballet now a days. Although, when I was in Tulsa Ballet's version of The Nutracker as a child, her name was Marie, and as of last season when I went to see it, it had been changed back to Clara.  Very interesting in my opinion.  Some other big changes that I find really interesting are the changing of character names.  In the original story, Marie's family is called Stahlbaum which means "steel tree' and Marie is "imprisoned within the regulations of the family".  Marie's godfather Drosselmeier (which means to stir up) is also described as provocative and strange.  This article had a lot of other great information and I would highly suggest reading it if anything I have said so far catches your attention! Last fun fact: the original ballet was unsuccessful, it was Tchaikovsky's composition to go with it that really made it famous and what made people fall in love with it. 

I found some really awesome information about this classic story that I didn't know and it was such a blast getting to learn all so much backstory to something that it so dear to me! Ever since I was a child, I've gone to see the ballet around Christmas, but I've never thought to look deeper into the meaning of it or how it came to be.  And to finally do that is super rewarding!

Illustration from the 1853 US edition of The Nutcracker. Web Source.