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ANTONIETTA DELL'ERA (1863? - ?)
Sugar Plum Fairy

All pioneers suffer in some way from their trailblazing. So it is with the unfortunate Dell'Era, who was the first to dance the ballerina role in The Nutcracker.

Until 1886, the Imperial Theaters had a license monopoly on productions in St. Petersburg, and before that, it was not possible for independent producers to mount operas, plays or ballets. When the monopoly broke, private productions of French and German operettas began to appear in the city, and Dell'Era, who had had a successful career at the Berlin Opera, came to dance in them. She was apparently rather vivacious, and soon became an audience favorite. Popular sentiment clamored for her appearance at the Maryinsky, and the management assented to the demand. She had been scheduled to make her debut at the house as Aurora in Sleeping Beauty, but elected to wait for the new production, in which a role could be tailored to her talents.

She had been the first in St. Petersburg of what came to be called "the Italian Invasion", with brilliant technicians like Virginia Zucchi, Carlotta Brianza and Enrico Cecchetti. These dancers soon developed their own fans, with Pierina Legnani soon to follow them to Russia, but Establishment resentment against the foreigners seems to have lingered with Dell'Era, and all settled upon her. One Maryinsky dancer applied the ultimate dancer damnation: "she's FAT!" Even Marius Petipa, usually given to gentleness in his Golden Days, and in his still-broken-after-all these-years Russian, said something like, "She ain't good, but she's what we got."

In her defense, at least one photograph of Dell'Era exists, and she does not appear any more roly-poly than the other Rubensesque ballerinas of her day, and if the currently-known Ivanov choreography for the dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy is indeed a survival from her creation, she can't have been too bad.

Alas, poor Dell'Era - no standard reference is quite certain of her birth year, specific background and training, and even the year of her death.

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PAVEL ANDREYEVICH GERDT
[See main biographical entry for Gerdt in Swan Lake]
Prince Coqueluche (Koklush)

Pavel Gerdt, especially when he was working with his good friend Lev Ivanov, often got to arrange his own variations. This practice may well have been in force with The Nutcracker, as the notation score of the ballet is absolutely blank for his solo. The press is entirely silent about this variation, and it is a bit frustrating to have to report on a vacuum. The music is not the usual driving, strongly accented "male variation" music we've come to expect; it's a soft tarentella, played first on the woodwinds, passing to the strings, then back to the woodwinds again. Some anecdotal evidences have Gerdt dancing the first part at half time to the music, then picking up the pace with small beats and ending with a coupe' jete' circle around the stage and a final pirouette, but no clear record of the actual steps survives.

His character's name, Prince Coqueluche, is rather strange - it means "whooping cough". Ronald Wiley, writing in his Tchaikovsky's Ballets, puts forward the idea that it may reflect the colloquial "etre la cocqueluche" - "to be the public's favorite", i.e. an infectious character. But, George Balanchine, recalling in Balanchine's Tchaikovsky, says he thinks that the character may have been intended to be a cough drop (you know - manly candy!). Archival evidence shows that Smith Brothers Cough Drops (Remember them? "Trade" and "Mark" and their beards on every box?) were being sold in Russia by 1890, and while it would be a vast leap to a conclusion to assume this, there was that beard that Gerdt wore as the cavalier.... Was there some kind of a visual pun going on?

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SERGEI GUSTAVOVITCH LEGAT (1875-1905)

Nutcracker

The younger brother of virtuoso classicist Nikolai Legat and the son of another, Gustav, Sergei Legat was, at 17, already a St. Petersburg teenage heartthrob. When he finally entered the main Maryinsky company, he became renowned for his dancing and acting in the Petipa and Ivanov repertory. He married the boss's daughter, Marie (Marussia) Petipa, and became the partner of many of the Maryinsky's top ballerinas. He staged the Joseph Bayer The Fairy Doll in conjunction with his brother in 1903 and taught mime and pas de deux at the Imperial Theater School. He became the repetiteur for the Maryinsky, but in 1905, when a dancers' strike placed him in an extremely uncomfortable position, he took his own life, having not yet reached the age of thirty

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