If you ever detected a sinister undertow in Tchaikovsky’s ballet “The Nutcracker,” the source material, by E.T.A. Hoffmann, is much worse.
Hoffmann’s 1816 story focuses on the Nutcracker’s battle with the evil Mouse King, filtered through the vivid imagination of a doomed dreamer with a perpetual mistrust of adults. It’s Herr Drosselmayer all the way, baby.
It often puzzles me how so many adaptations of Hoffmann’s stories gloss over the sinister and the uncanny elements. “The Nutcracker” has its share of up-tempo numbers. They’re mostly the ones we hear in stores while we’re out Christmas shopping. However, there’s little doubt the composer grasped the inexorable undertow of Hoffmann, since his score conveys plenty of anxiety to counterbalance the twee sweets.
Listen to the bass clarinet slither beneath that glittery celesta in the “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.” And what’s all that creeping around, with the disturbing sforzandi? There’s something desperate and perhaps a little manic underpinning the magic.
Maurice Sendak completely gets it. If you have never seen Carroll Ballard’s 1986 film of “The Nutcracker,” with the Sendak designs and dancers of Pacific Northwest Ballet, you should make it a point to do so. Its sugar plums are all steeped in acid. Sir Charles Mackerras conducts the London Symphony Orchestra on the soundtrack.
I’m not even sure I could describe the subtext as Freudian. It’s just out there. And it has the best WTF ending of all “Nutcracker” adaptations.
But if it’s snowflakes and flowers you’re interested in, here’s an extended suite of highlights with the Boston Pops conducted by Arthur Fiedler, on Fiedler’s birthday.
Get crackin’!