Cracking the Nut

The Guardian has been showing the Royal Ballet's Nutcracker, presented in the UK's Covent Garden in 2009, in two parts on its website.

So I watched it the day it went up on the internet. I thought the standard of acting was astonishingly good, as well as the detail in the costumes, which are distractingly Jane Austen adaptation-like; the settings, mannerisms and dress all seem to hearken quite faithfully to the ideal of domesticity in 19th-century Germany. In this sense it is probably not as close to the source material; E.T.A. Hoffmann was I think a subversive writer and his Nutcracker is dark and trippy and funny like many of his other works. On the other hand, I once saw an unhealthy interpretation on television, which inflicted some emotional scarring which I've fortunately for the most part forgotten, so there is no need to go to the other extreme! Either way, this Covent Garden imagining is self-consciously indulgent and much like Zeffirelli's Metropolitan Opera art direction seems to be — perfect for people who like tradition and like to be pampered. The question of its balletic nature is probably best left to more knowledgeable heads than mine.

Since the Guardian film is only temporarily available,  here is this production from 2008 — in the same opera house, much the same cast and same stage direction, with the notable difference that another ballerina (Alexandra Ansanelli) is the Sugar Plum Fairy.