Home
Ballet Talk
Magazines
Specials
Reviews
Ballets
Dancers
Companies
Studio
Shop
Links
Subscribe

IVAN ALEXANDROVICH VSEVELOZHSKY (1835-1909)
Librettist

Vsevolozhsky was a distant relation of the Tsar's, and had spent most of his adult life in the Russian diplomatic service. He was appointed to be the
Director of the Imperial Theaters with the idea that he would be very conservative, and work few changes in the system. Predictably, he then
established a public arts commission, raised artists' salaries, increased creators' fees, opened drama and singing classes, published a yearbook, founded performing arts libraries, and began having a photo studio as part of the Theater complex. Some of his ideas did not work out very well, as his policy of "no complimentary tickets", which left the houses more than half- empty, or his breaking of the Imperial monopoly on printing theater posters. He also downsized and restructured the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow, nearly destroying it in the process. Probably his best reform was ending the licensing monopoly on private productions of music and dance programs, which brought added diversity to the theater scene in Russia.

He chose for his libretto the Dumas pere retelling of the E.T.A. Hoffman story, "The Nutcracker and the Mouse-King". He had first (1886) attempted to
interest Tchaikovsky in writing a new ballet to the story of Undine, but this plan did not produce results. By this time, Tchaikovsky had already read the Hoffman story and found it appealing. Perhaps during the discussions surrounding this first ballet, the seed for Nutcracker was sown.

Back to the Nutcracker