An eternal tale. The Nutcracker Story.
On these pre-Christmas, New Year's days, the air is saturated with a sense of magic and fairy tales!
And I want to tell you about the main character of one of the most famous and beloved fairy tales. German, but responding warmly in every Russian soul thanks to the greatest talent of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Of course you already guessed who this hero is.
NUTCRACKER
So who is he and how was he born?
Well, in general, everything is simple. He is a nutcracker. Although hardly anyone is now used for its intended purpose - it is too beautiful, loved and legendary for this. And he did not always have such a function.
A bit of history ...
The Nutcracker was born in Seifen in the Ore Mountains of Germany over 300 years ago. The miners whiled away their free time carving simple toys from wooden blocks - animals, fairy-tale heroes. Or, on the contrary, quite real, in the opinion of the poor miners, villains - the rich oppressors, kings, gendarmes. These insatiable oppressors were portrayed with large, toothed mouths. Later, one of the miners came up with the idea that at least these wooden kings would work for the people. And since then, the nibbles have become nutcrackers and cracked nuts for the poor.
In 1699, Johann Himann, a peasant from Seifen, took local wooden toys three hundred kilometers to a fair in Leipzig. And he made this path for a reason. I sold out almost all the toys, I returned happy. Customers especially liked the Nutcracker. Since then, every self-respecting craftsman in the village had to make his own Nutcracker, and the wooden soldiers themselves scattered throughout Germany.
Literary history.
And at the beginning of the 19th century, the German storyteller Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann saw the Nutcracker.
And the wooden toy became the main character of his fairy tale "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King". The plot of the tale, I think, does not need to be described? If you want to refresh your memory, choose - a book, a wonderful cartoon. Or, for special gourmets, ballet is an indispensable line in the Christmas poster of the Moscow Bolshoi Theater.
Thanks to this surprisingly touching and instructive tale, the Nutcracker has become a real symbol of Christmas.
And, of course, BALLET!
In Russia, this story gained overwhelming popularity just after Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky composed the ballet The Nutcracker at the end of the 19th century.
Rumor has it that in childhood, Hoffmann's tale was very loved by the future great composer. Whether this is true or not is not known for certain, but the ballet he created is undoubtedly a masterpiece of musical art.
Today, old Seifen houses the Nutcracker Museum. It contains the names of outstanding legendary masters: the old woman Augusta Müller, her nephew Karl Müller, the Füchtner family, the eldest of which, according to legend, was the first creator of the Nutcracker ... In a word, the whole story of the Nutcracker “first hand”. And modern nutcrackers are an important element of Christmas home decoration for many Europeans. They are sold at Christmas markets, but for their intended purpose - for cracking nuts - they, of course, are almost never used.
And even though this toy itself is not so common in our country, its symbolism is close to us. And we, like our grandmothers, continue to freeze, holding our breath, at the first sounds of a melody familiar from childhood, and think about the coming good, eternal and such warm holiday, regardless of the weather, Christmas!
And finally, the images of the Nutcracker, embodied in dolls
Photo. Margarita Dadykina @margarita_dadykina_artdolls
Olga Korobova @olga_korobova_artdoll
Oksana Shebaleva Facebook https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001846180990
Elena Babkina Facebook https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100010368966801
Lyudmila Burmistrova @ mila.burm
Other photo sources: labirint.ru, livelyplanet.ru, u74.ru, moscovery.com,
Author of the article Julia Gapunik @yugdolls
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