DID YOU KNOW? The Nutcracker

The team over on CBeebies will be performing a children’s version of The Nutcracker (5pm). Here are some things you might not know about Tchaikovsky’s classic ballet…

The ballet is based on E.T.A. Hoffman’s story The Nutcracker And The Mouse King, with a score by Tchaikovsky. It was the composer’s final ballet, but he died a year after writing it, and never got to see how successful it would become.

When it was first performed at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, in 1892, critics were unimpressed, and the future looked bleak for the ballet. It wasn’t until the prominent Russian choreographer George Balanchine’s 1954 production in New York that the show really began to gain popularity, and by the late 1960s, it had become a firm Christmas favourite. The twinkling that you hear during the Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairy is performed on the celesta, a piano-like instrument Tchaikovsky smuggled into Russia from Paris.

According to German folklore, nutcrackers are given as good luck charms, and help to ward off evil. The production has been a favourite of stage and screen for the past 60 years. The ballet has also been staged a number of times on ice, most notably in 1983, starring our very own Robin Cousins. There’s even been a version featuring Barbie, released in 2001. The CBeebies production stars Katrina Bryan as the Sugar Plum Fairy (left).