Having danced “The Nutcracker” daily from September to December for 11 years in various roles, I find it difficult to remember hearing the opening strains of Tchaikovsky’s ballet for the first time. But of course it once was heard for the very first time, one week before Christmas in 1892, by the sold-out audience of the Maryinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, Russia. The now-beloved and perhaps overly familiar holiday ballet premiered as a double feature with Tchaikovsky’s opera “Iolanta,” with Czar Alexander III in attendance.
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