Bolshoi: The Nutcracker - Extract 1
The Nutcracker first opened in 1892 at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg and was Tchaikovsky's last ballet.
Composed over one year, its score today is one of the most popular of all ballet scores. For The Nutcracker Tchaikovsky again joined forces with Marius Petipa, with whom he had collaborated on The Sleeping Beauty. This version, choreographed for the Bolshoi by Yuri Grigorovich, is full of romanticism and philosophical reflections on ideal love.
It became one of the great classics of the 20th century and, alongside Spartacus and Ivan the Terrible, is one of Grigorovich's most famous works.