Event

Ballet Film: THE NUTCRACKER AND THE MOUSE KING - Opernhaus Zürich

Recorded April 2018
From Opernhaus Zürich
Ballet in 2 acts
Approximately 2h15

Libretto adapted by E.T.A. Hoffmanns story The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, by way of Alexandre Dumas adapted story The Nutcracker.

Because of Tchaikovskys imaginative music, The Nutcracker is one of the most popular works of the ballet repertoire, instantly bringing to mind scenes of a splendidly decorated Christmas room, dancing snowflakes and the waltz of the flowers. The plot of The Nutcracker is based on a novella by E.T.A. Hoffmann, one of the most famous writers of German Romanticism. While Hoffmanns masterful fairytale virtuously jumps back and forth from a dream to reality, in its adaptation as a ballet libretto by Alexandre Dumas and Marius Petipa, it lost much of its dark romantic fantasy.

Christian Spuck attempts to distance himself from the Dumas/Petipas version in his choreography and puts the literary origin at the heart of his ballet, emphasizing the fantastical nature of the original rather than the delightful Christmas fairytale and bringing back the fairytale of the princess Pirlipat, who turns into a nut monster, as told by E.T.A. Hoffmann. In Rufus Didwiszus stage setting, the workshop of the godfather Drosselmeier turns into an old revue-theater, where the characters of the ballet come to life. Spucks choreography plays with the richness of characters in E.T.A. Hoffmanns narrative cosmos, the absurdity and overwrought humor that inhabit them while at the same time looking down into the dark abyss of Romanticism.