Sugar Plum Fairy
The Nutcracker (Russian: Щелкунчик, Балет-феерия, Shchelkunchik, Balet-feyeriya; French: Casse-Noisette, Ballet-Féerie), Op. 71, is a two-act ballet, originally choreographed by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov with a score by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The libretto is adapted from E.T.A. Hoffmann's story The Nutcracker and the Mouse King. It was given its première at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg on Sunday, 18 December 1892, on a double-bill with Tchaikovsky's opera, Iolanta.
Although the original production was not a success, the twenty-minute suite that Tchaikovsky extracted from the ballet was. However, the complete Nutcracker has enjoyed enormous popularity since the late 1960s and is now performed by countless ballet companies, primarily during the Christmas season, especially in the U.S. Major American ballet companies generate around 40 percent of their annual ticket revenues from performances of The Nutcracker.
Tchaikovsky's score has become one of his most famous compositions, in particular the pieces featured in the suite. Among other things, the score is noted for its use of the celesta, an instrument that the composer had already employed in his much lesser known symphonic ballad The Voyevoda.
Read more about Sugar Plum Fairy: Composition, History, Roles, Synopsis, In Popular Culture, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words sugar, plum and/or fairy:
“Naughty Paughty Jack-a-Dandy,
Stole a Piece of Sugar Candy
From the Grocer’s Shoppy-Shop,
And away did hoppy-hop.”
—Henry Carey (1693?–1743)
“Twilight and bulb define
the brown room, the overstuffed plum sofa,
the boy, and the girl’s thin hands above his head.”
—Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)
“When the first baby laughed for the first time, the laugh broke into a thousand pieces and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies. And now when every new baby is born its first laugh becomes a fairy. So there ought to be one fairy for every boy or girl.”
—J.M. (James Matthew)