Premiere of Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker ballet held
The Istanbul State Opera and Ballet held the premiere of The Nutcracker, the final ballet composed by Russian composer P. I. Tchaikovsky in 1891, the previous evening.
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The premiere of the magical fairy-tale style ballet 'The Nutcracker', which tells the story of the dreams of a young German girl, Clara Stahlbaum, regarding the nutcracker toy she received as a Christmas gift, was held at the Atatürk Cultural Center-Türk Telekom Opera Hall.
The story 'The Nutcracker and the Mouse King', written in 1816 by the German author E. T. A. Hoffmann based on similar folk tales from various countries, was adapted and translated by the famous French author Alexandre Dumas (père) in 1844, who softened the gloomy atmosphere of the story and transformed it into a fairy tale.
Ivan Vsevolozhsky, the director of the Imperial Theatres in St. Petersburg in the 1890s, thought that Dumas's Nutcracker story could make a good ballet and asked Tchaikovsky to compose a ballet on this subject.
WORLD PREMIERE HELD IN 1892 BUT...
The world premiere of The Nutcracker, which Tchaikovsky composed based on a detailed libretto prepared by the famous French-born choreographer Marius Petipa, the ballet director of the Imperial Theatre, took place on December 18, 1892, but resulted in failure.
Despite this failure, the ballet was saved from being lost thanks to various choreographers who made arrangements to the work and restaged it in later years.
The choreography of The Nutcracker, which holds an unchanging place in the repertoire of all ballet companies around the world as a New Year's classic, belongs to Mehmet Balkan (after M. Petipa – L. Ivanov).
The two-act work was staged by Lale Balkan.
The Nutcracker will continue to meet with ballet lovers in January and February.