Nutcracker, Sweeeeeeet..?

[just_your_jenn]

Wow.. did I hear that right? In "Fantasia" (1980) the narrator says: "The one composition of Tchaikovsky's that he really detested was his Nutcracker Suite, which is probably the most popular thing he ever wrote. It's a series of dances taken out of a full-length ballet called "The Nutcracker" that he once composed for the St. Petersburg Opera

Comments

[prudentior]

Pretty sure he meant that nobody performs the suite nowadays, which is still more or less true...

[just_your_jenn]

Hm? He does quite clearly differentiate..

[prudentior]

"The one composition of Tchaikovsky's that he really detested was his Nutcracker Suite, which is probably the most popular thing he ever wrote. It's a series of dances taken out of a full-length ballet called "The Nutcracker" that he once composed for the St. Petersburg Opera House. It wasn't much of a success and nobody performs it nowadays."

The subject of each of the sentences is the suite, not the ballet. In the latter two sentences, that would be "It" at the beginning, referring back both times to the first sentence.

That said - the part about it not being a success doesn't make much sense, then, does it? Maybe you're right...

[yeomusician]

DID YOU KNOW THAT?
The Nutcracker Suite was very popular from its first performance on but the Nutcracker Ballet was a failure and did not have a single staging in the US until 1944, four years after the making of Fantasia (1940). The Ballet only gained popularity because of a widely successful 1954 George Ballanchine production with the New York City Ballet.

NOW YOU KNOW

[just_your_jenn]

Ah so it was the ballet they were referring to (probably), hooray!

[silver_road25]

life is a circle. what goes around, comes around. Or so a Karma believer says.