The Nutcracker captures the optimism and spirit of the Western world before the horrors of the twentieth century unfolded. From Jeffrey A. Tucker at brownstone.org:
Many people this holiday season will experience the joy of attending a local performance of The Nutcracker ballet by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. It’s the most implausible American tradition imaginable, an import from fin-de-siècle Russia straight to your hometown. It’s living proof of the capacity of music and the art of dance to leap the bounds of time and space and delight us forever.
And I mean forever. There are many people who pay no attention to the arts and then get engaged during the holidays for this one event. Yes, we wish it would be all year but this is the reality, and nothing to put down in the slightest.
Perhaps some viewer’s own children will perform in it, and that’s part of the appeal. But there’s more. Some reports suggest that this one ballet accounts for 40 percent of the annual revenue for professional companies.
It’s no wonder why: The music is brilliant, elegant, and vaguely familiar to everyone (it is out of copyright and therefore featured in countless ads). The melodies are filled with magic, fantasy, mystery, love, strange sounds you never otherwise hear, and unrelenting spectacle. And no matter how “classical” old-world ballet is, it never ceases to amaze us to watch this highly specialized combination of athleticism and art in action.
What theater goers don’t entirely realize is that they are watching something even more wonderful than what they see. In this one ballet, we gain a picture of a prosperous world that emerged in the late 19th century, was shortly shattered by war and revolution, and then was nearly killed off by the political and ideological experimentation of the 20th century.
