E.T.A. Hoffman first wrote the children’s story, published in 1816. A young child’s favorite Christmas toy, the Nutcracker, comes alive to wage a battle against the evil Mouse King – after which the Nutcracker Prince whisks the little girl to a magical kingdom. For Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, this would be his third major commissioned work, after Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty. For purposes of the ballet, the story’s adaptation by Alexander Dumas (author of The Three Musketeers) was chosen and simplified.

On this day, December 18, in 1892, Tachikovsky’s Nutcracker began at the Mariinsky theatre, Russia’s premiere stage.

The choreography for the ballet went trough several different revision by different men. Reviews for the performance were decidedly mixed, some praising the dancers, and others calling the entire ballet insipid. Still, Tchaikovsky’s music was not to be blamed: the 20-minute suite he extracted from it became a musical favorite, and a backdoor into the popularization of the ballet.