The Nutcracker

In 1890 the Imperial Theatres commissioned from Tchaikovsky a one-act opera and a two-act ballet to share a single evening. The opera became Iolanta; for the ballet he chose Hoffmann's tale of the nutcracker and the mouse king, not in the original but in Dumas père's French retelling. Modest Tchaikovsky recorded that his brother first outlined the scenario himself for the theatre director Vsevolozhsky, then worked to Marius Petipa's exceptionally detailed instructions about the character of each number. An invitation to open Carnegie Hall in 1891 interrupted the work.