Kirov Nutcracker Tchaikovsky Blueray

A masterpiece of classical dance, and a Christmas favourite with audiences everywhere, this Nutcracker is a magical version of the score by Tchaikovsky filmed at the Bolshoi Theatre. Since its première in Saint-Petersburg in 1892, The Nutcracker has been one of the most successful classical ballets and Tchaikovsky's score has become one of his most famous compositions. Yuri Grigorovich deals with Hoffmann s fantastic imagery and takes ideas from Marius Petipa s scenario: battle of the mice, snowflakes flurry, character dances executed by the dolls that came to life… The most talented soloists of the Bolshoi Ballet appear in this production including Nina Kaptsova (Marie) and Artem Ovcharenko (the Nutcracker Prince) and Denis Savin (Drosselmeyer).

P. I. Tchaikovsky is considered to be Russia’s great symphonic composer. In his music he achieved a synthesis of the national musical language of Russia and the compositional forms of the western European Romantics. His most famous ballets enjoy a position of honor in the Classical Ballet repertoire on account of their melodic intensity and instrumental brilliance. In the fairy tale “The Nutcracker and the King of the Mice” written by the German Romantic E. T. A. Hoffmann and published in 1814, on which Tchaikovsky’s ballet is based, Christmas provides the realistic setting for a fantastic plot. Fiction and reality are woven together by means of strange and wondrous occurrences to produce a fascinating and unfathomable labyrinth. Both Hoffmann and Tchaikovsky, who began to compose the ballet in his fiftieth year, could identify with the literary figure of the watchmaker Drosselmeier, who gives order to his life through his work. In 1999, exactly 107 years – to the day – after the first performance in St. Petersburg, Patrice Bart’s choreography of Tchaikovsky’s worldwide success The Nutcracker was premiered at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin. Bart placed a prologue before the ballet in which Marie is abducted as a child and in which everything is placed in a modern context.