The Nutcracker and the Mouse King at New National Theatre Tokyo

The great German Romantic E.T.A. Hoffmann spent a significant part of his life among Poles. He had a Polish wife, he wrote and worked in G?ogów, Pozna?, P?ock, and finally Warsaw. Here, he lived at the Tenement under Samson in Freta Street and made friends with a neighbour, Julius Eduard Hitzig, whose children Marie and Fritz he later portrayed in the fairy tale The Nutcracker and the Mouse King. Years later, Alexandre Dumas (father) recognized it as the “most beautiful fairy tale” and translated it into French, popularising it across Europe. This was the version that found its way into the hands of the choreographer Marius Petipa and the composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky – authors of the libretto and music for the famous ballet (1892) which was to become one of the most important ballet titles in the world.

That is why The Nutcracker simply had to be included in the Polish National Ballet’s repertoire. This typical family show, for children and entire families, is strongly bound to the Euro-American Christmas tradition. It is being staged in Warsaw in a particularly spectacular visual setting, using many of the extraordinary technical possibilities the Teatr Wielki’s stage offers. The production is the work of two great artists: Wayne Eagling, a Canadian, director of the English National Ballet, and Toer van Schayk, who is from The Netherlands and recently received the prestigious Benois de la Danse Award, whose sets and costumes previously added sparkle to our Cinderella with Frederick Ashton’s choreography. This time he plans to set the ballet in bygone Warsaw from the times of E.T.A. Hoffmann.