![]() Unlike the ballet performances, there is no Sugar Plum Fairy that guides Marie and the Nutcracker into the Land of the Sweets, but there is a seven-headed mouse king who taunts Marie into giving him all of her toys. In The Nutcracker and The Mouse King, the characters face beheadings and “death under the executioner’s ax.” After a long night of Christmas festivities with her family, Marie cradles the nutcracker in her sleep and wakes up caught in a fatal battle in which the “bloodthirsty” mice bite an opposing toy army to shreds. However, there are more dark elements and details in the original story than in the ballet performances. There, young Marie receives the gift of a nutcracker, which, at the very end, turns into a human and walks her off into a magical land of toys and candy. ![]() Hoffman’s story is like most ballet adaptations in that it begins at a Christmas Eve Party. However, the original 1816 story of The Nutcracker, derived from E.T.A Hoffman’s The Nutcracker and The Mouse King, was far from a happy child’s fairytale. In a classic ballet performance of The Nutcracker, you can enjoy a spectacle of dancing, gift-giving, magical voyages through lands of snow, waltzing flowers, and a happy sugar-plum fairy who dotes upon a young girl and her nutcracker prince. ![]()
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