On December 18, 1892, the ballet The Nutcracker had its first performance, at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, Russia. The choreography was by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov, and the music was by Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky. The ballet is based on a short story by E. T. A. Hoffmann (e-book, e-audio, print), in which a young girl is given a nutcracker as a Christmas gift by her godfather; that night, she imagines that the nutcracker comes to life as a handsome prince who takes her to the Land of Sweets.
The ballet was not a success in its first performance. Critics complained that the dancers weren't very good, the choreography was confusing, and the story strayed too far from Hoffmann's original. The one element of the production that was generally well received was Tchaikovsky's music. The Philharmonia Orchestra's performance of the complete ballet is conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas.
And when the composer selected highlights of the ballet to be performed in a 20-minute concert suite, that suite was even more successful. It was a staple of the concert hall for decades before the ballet itself gained its current popularity. Mstislav Rostropovich leads the Berlin Philharmonic's performance of the suite.
Other composers and performers have been inspired to arrange parts of the ballet for their own instruments. Mikhail Pletnev's Concert Suite (which does not include the same pieces of the ballet as the Tchaikovsky orchestral suite) is for solo piano, as is Percy Grainger's Paraphrase on Tchaikovsky's Flower Waltz. Stevan Pasero has created a suite for guitar, and comedian Spike Jones and his band offer a more irreverent version. The Modern Mandolin Quartet performs the Trepak (Russian Dance), and vocal ensemble Pentatonix performs the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.
It wasn't until 1944 that the complete ballet was first performed in the United States. The Christmas Eve performance by the San Francisco Ballet was such a success that it's been a Christmas Eve tradition in San Francisco ever since. The New York City Ballet began its own Christmas season productions in 1954, and the ballet quickly became a holiday tradition for most American ballet companies, some of which generate as much as 40% of their annual income from The Nutcracker.
Two different versions of the ballet are available on streaming video. There's a traditional interpretation by the Mariinsky Ballet, where The Nutcracker was first performed; and a more modern version from Pacific Northwest Ballet, with sets and costumes designed by Maurice Sendak.
Much of The Nutcracker takes place at a Christmas Eve party, and performing as one of the children in attendance is often the first ballet role for young dance students. In Raising the Barre (e-book, e-audio), Lauren Kessler writes about her own disappointing childhood experience with The Nutcracker, and her adult quest to improve her rusty dance skills enough to appear in a small role in a professional production.
Gregory Maguire's novel Hiddensee (e-book, e-audio, print) imagines the backstory of the Nutcracker and of the mysterious godfather who created it. And Lindsay Smith's Crochet Stories: The Nutcracker (e-book) gives crocheters instructions to create a complete set of the story's major characters.