The Nutcracker and the Mouse King

First act

Clara Staalboom and her brother Frits are in a small bathroom in Amsterdam. They are washed and dressed for the Sinterklaas party. Their older sister Louise is excited. She keeps coming into the room.

Outside, it is snowing. People are skating on the canal. The Staalboom family’s guests arrive one by one. Mr. Drosselmeyer, an old man, also comes. He brings his young nephew with him. Drosselmeyer does magic tricks for the children. He even makes time stand still. When he claps his hands, everything goes back to normal.

Sinterklaas and Piet visit and give gifts. After the visit, Drosselmeyer shows a special lamp: a magic lantern. The lantern shows a story. It is about a princess who does not want to marry the Mouse King. She loves a prince. The Mouse King gets angry and turns the prince into a Nutcracker. Clara thinks the prince looks like Drosselmeyer’s nephew. She gets the Nutcracker as a gift and dances happily with the doll. But Frits breaks the doll.

Drosselmeyer fixes the Nutcracker. Then the children go to bed. Clara sneaks back to the living room. She wants to give Drosselmeyer’s nephew a ribbon.

In Clara’s dream, she sees the Mouse King. He wants to eat the Nutcracker. Clara runs to the living room to save the doll. Suddenly, everything changes. The walls grow taller, and mice come out from everywhere. The Nutcracker comes out of a cabinet and starts to fight. He is helped by toy soldiers. Frits also helps.

The Mouse King hurts the Nutcracker. Clara helps him, and they escape together. The Nutcracker turns into a prince. He takes Clara to a snowy forest. But the Mouse King follows them. Just in time, Drosselmeyer arrives and takes them into his magic lantern.

Second act

Clara, the prince, and Drosselmeyer are now inside the magic lantern. Drosselmeyer shows the people who work in the lantern. They make sure it keeps turning. But then the Mouse King and his rats arrive. Drosselmeyer scares them with a big cat’s paw and a giant eye. The prince fights the Mouse King and wins. The spell is broken. The prince is free.

The magic lantern takes Clara and the prince to beautiful lands. Clara sees her family again in dances. She also dances a duet with the prince. But then the magic lantern spins faster and faster. Everything goes dark. Clara falls…

She wakes up in her bed. She runs to the door. Outside, she sees Drosselmeyer and his nephew disappearing into the night.

Choreographers

A choreographer creates the dance steps for the whole ballet. They also help decide what the set and costumes will look like. The ballet The Nutcracker and the Mouse King was made by two choreographers: Wayne Eagling and Toer van Schayk.

Wayne Eagling was the artistic director of Dutch National Ballet from 1991 to 2002. Toer van Schayk started as a dancer at Dutch National Ballet in 1965. Since 1976, he has worked as a choreographer and also designs sets and costumes.

The ballet The Nutcracker has been around for a very long time. It was first created in 1892 by two choreographers: Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov. They worked in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The ballet was performed for the first time in the Mariinsky Theatre. The music was written by the famous composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

The composer: Tchaikovsky

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky lived from 1840 to 1892. He was a Russian composer and died at the age of 53.

Tchaikovsky created and wrote the music for The Nutcracker. In the ballet, he wrote a choir piece sung by children during the dance of the snowflakes.

Tchaikovsky composed ten operas and three ballets. All three ballets are very famous: Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, and The Nutcracker. He also wrote music for plays, symphonies, suites, and other orchestral works, as well as chamber music, piano music, and songs.