Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairies: A Song History

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The “Dance of the Sugar-Plum Fairy” is the second variation in the Act II pas de deux of The Nutcracker, Tchaikovsky’s ballet, op. 71.[1] The ballet opened at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg on 18 December 1892 (6 December in the Old Style calendar then used in Russia), on a double bill with his opera Iolanta.[1] Lev Ivanov produced the premiere from a scenario by Ivan Vsevolozhsky and Marius Petipa, and the Mariinsky today credits the staging to Ivanov and Petipa jointly.[1][2] Antonietta Dell’Era created the role of the Sugar-Plum Fairy.[1]

Painting of ballet dancers in green tutus waiting in the wings beside painted scenery

Edgar Degas, Dancers, Pink and Green, oil on canvas, ca. 1890. Ballet dancers of Tchaikovsky's time, shown for their subject; the painting has no connection to The Nutcracker.

The dance’s melody is carried by the celesta, a keyboard instrument made by the Mustel workshop in Paris in 1886.[3] Tchaikovsky came across it in Paris in 1891 while travelling to America,[3][4] and that June he asked his publisher to order one from Paris, with the new ballet among the works he had in mind for it.[1] He hoped to be the first to introduce it in Russia and tried to keep his use of it quiet.[4] His score nevertheless allows a piano to take the part where no celesta is available.[1]

The dance is also one of the eight numbers in the concert suite Tchaikovsky drew from the ballet; he conducted the suite’s first performance at a Russian Musical Society concert in St Petersburg on 19 March 1892 (7 March Old Style), and it was played in Chicago that October, both months before the ballet reached the stage.[5] Butch Ross includes it in The Crash Bang Dulcimer Christmas Book, a collection of playful dulcimer arrangements of Christmas classics.[6]

Our book that contains the song "Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairies"

Sources

  1. Tchaikovsky Research: "The Nutcracker".
  2. Mariinsky Theatre: "The Mariinsky Theatre marks 125 years of the ballet The Nutcracker".
  3. Birmingham Royal Ballet: "Heavenly tunes of The Nutcracker".
  4. Queensland Ballet: "The Nutcracker (2019): The Music".
  5. Tchaikovsky Research: "The Nutcracker (suite)".
  6. Fingers Of Steel: "Butch Ross, The Crash Bang Dulcimer Christmas Book".
  7. Image: Edgar Degas, Dancers, Pink and Green, oil on canvas, ca. 1890. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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