Reliving memories of Rudolf Nureyev’s 1968 The Nutcracker production for The Royal Ballet

United Kingdom Rudolf Nureyev’s The Nutcracker: Dancers of The Royal Ballet, Covent Garden Opera Chorus / John Lanchbery (conductor). Filmed (directed by John Vernon) at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, 10.3.1968 and re-released on DVD by Opus Arte in 2020. (JPr)

It is almost 85 years since Rudolf Nureyev’s birth and soon it will be 30 years since his deeply sad, premature death and I feel the need to mark these anniversaries in some small way. For those who saw him, as I did several times, Nureyev had remarkable personal and artistic charisma and we will never see his like again. He also can never be forgotten because of his zealotry in always giving male dancers – himself first and foremost – as much to do as possible in any new version of the classics. He may not always have got the balance perfectly right; but what he did was often thought-provoking and spectacular, as witnessed by his Sleeping Beauty (1975) and Romeo and Juliet (1977) for London Festival Ballet (as English National Ballet was then) that I grew up going to see as often as I could. There were several evenings at Covent Garden too, and in the early 1980s I saw him dance in his wonderful Swan Lake which he created for Vienna State Ballet in 1964 and which had its 243rd performance in the Austrian capital in March 2022.

Also, one of the earliest ballets I ever saw was The Royal Ballet’s The Nutcracker at Covent Garden in 1977 and it has remained in my memory – and I tend to mention it in every Nutcracker review I write! – without having seen it again apart from the recording of a 2018 Vienna revival (here). Because I only have watched ballet live, in the cinema or streamed online I was blissfully unaware of any recording released of Nureyev dancing in his own production. During this past Christmas the BBC showed The Classical Collection with some seasonal fare including a pas de deux from the 1968 recording of The Nutcracker with Nureyev’s Prince and Merle Park as Clara. What we saw then – and subsequently in this DVD – is the 5th performance on 10th March and some further research reveals that when I saw it on 13th January 1977 that was the 35th of only 36 performances it ever had at Covent Garden. That was despite The Royal Ballet’s founder, Dame Ninette de Valois, calling it ‘the best Nutcracker England ever had’, which probably remains the case today. Though, obviously, the production has been subsequently staged many times elsewhere, most recently in December 2022 at La Scala, Milan.

In 1958, Nureyev – just 19 and still a student at the Vaganova Academy (Kirov Ballet school) – made his debut as the Prince in a revival of Vasili Vainonen’s famous 1934 The Nutcracker. Apparently, it was this production which inspired the first one Nureyev staged for Swedish National Ballet in 1967. With new designs from the late Nicholas Georgiadis – who he had worked with on his Vienna Swan Lake – Nureyev created this The Nutcracker for The Royal Ballet. His Freudian version takes place, as usual, on Christmas Eve, and Georgiadis (2023 is the centenary of his birth) once suggested we are shown 1905 fin-de-siècle Russia. The ballet begins with four young men playing about in front of the Stahlbaums’s impressive villa frontage as the guests – including Drosselmeyer – arrive for their party. (More than ever this opening scene reminded me of Wayne Eagling’s current English National Ballet Nutcracker.) The costumes are traditional – and typically Russian – with elegant ball gowns and gold-braided officers’ uniforms. Later there will later be Hussars on horses (well, of sorts!). The decorations are as realistic and as elaborate as the costumes, with a large candlelit tree to the rear of a vast salon.

The limping Drosselmeyer looks rather piratical with his tricorn hat and eyepatch (it is his appearance that was my abiding memory from 1977). He has a gold and white Nutcracker doll for Clara and in a vivid red and black cloak entertains the children looking like an eccentric wizard. Nureyev includes – just like Vainonen – Drosselmeyer’s puppet show which foreshadows the subsequent dream sequences. There is a charming solo for a reflective Clara before her brother Franz breaks her treasured doll and Drosselmeyer repairs it, cementing him as a father-figure to Clara. It has all been rather too much for her and she falls asleep as the clock strikes twelve.

Now begins the psychoanalytical twist Nureyev brings to the ballet as Clara dreams she is menaced by 18 scurrying rats and her Nutcracker doll becomes her white knight. Eventually – after things don’t go that well for the battling toy soldiers and Clara has been surrounded – she vanquishes the huge Rat King by throwing a candle at it rather than one of her shoes. The Nutcracker has now transformed into the Prince Clara’s pubescent heart desires and there is an appealing duet for them, before the Prince’s joyful solo, 26 sparkling Snowflakes, and the calming singing of the Covent Garden Chorus, brings the first act to a close in gently falling snow. (Intriguingly this has been staged in a glacial-looking garden setting with a slope and some angel statues at the back and the snowflakes exit going slowly up it in the opposite way to the famous entry of the shades in La Bayadère.)

The second act begins with a boat ride to the Land of Sweets which brought back memories of the jaw-dropping one Nureyev devised for the panorama scene in his Sleeping Beauty for London Festival Ballet. It then continues with one extended dream sequence after another and more Freudian imaginings. Firstly, there is a nightmarish sequence for Clara as the familiar faces of family and friends from around the Christmas tree appear costumed as bats and we will see some of those faces again in the Spanish, Arabian, Russian, Chinese, and Pastorale dances. (The 1960s was the time when two slaves robbing a rather portly pasha who has been entertaining his harem and three caricatures of Chinese people engaged in some rough and tumble never gave anyone a second thought!)

By now it is Drosselmeyer who has been shown changing into the handsome prince who will dance with Clara in the sublimely classical grand pas deux and not the Sugar Plum Fairy and her Cavalier. As a coda, Drosselmeyer cradles the sleeping Clara in his arms before handing her over to her mother as – along with all the other guests – he leaves the party. Clara rouses herself and searches in vain for Drosselmeyer before going slowly up the stairs still clutching her Nutcracker doll.

The choreography was full of Nureyev’s familiar demanding balances, intricate footwork and armography, He also brought geometric patterning to the group movement – and especially to the ‘Waltz of the Snowflakes’ scene – that possibly owed much to Vainonen. I do believe dancers’ technique and athleticism has improved considerably during the intervening 50plus years and the corps de ballet did not always move as one when they should have. (Sometimes dancers can actually look overtrained these days.) As Clara, Merle Park’s dancing had virtuosity, grandeur, and most significantly, naturalness.

Nureyev’s pantherine pyrotechnics, gravity-defying leaps and speed across the stage will make you hold your breath but equally important was how sensitively and securely he partnered Park. I would like to see what modern ballerina could be thrown in the air, twist horizontally and get caught by the Prince’s arms with the ease Park and Nureyev brought to this, as well as the end to their adagio where she lies on his raised leg.

There are a lot of other legendary names in a cast who dance committedly and enthusiastically. How great it was to see Monica Mason, Lesley Collier, Michael Coleman, Wayne Sleep, amongst others, at the height of their careers. Especially poignant was to watch English-Australian composer and conductor, John Lanchbery, launch the orchestra into the ballet’s brief overture as 2023 also marks, like Georgiadis, the 100th anniversary of his birth as well as the 20th of his death at 79. The sound on this DVD is not the best but it was clear Lanchbery and his musicians did justice to Tchaikovsky’s unceasingly scintillating score and the tempi were swift which challenged some of the dancers, though not of course, Nureyev.

Jim Pritchard

Production:
Music – Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky
Choreography and Production – Rudolf Nureyev (Vasili Ivanovich Vainonen – Act II: The Prince’s Variation)
Set and Costume designer – Nicholas Georgiadis
Lighting designer – William Bundy
Chorus Master – Douglas Robinson

Cast included:
Clara – Merle Park
Herr Drosselmeyer / The Prince – Rudolf Nureyev
Dr Stahlbaum – Leslie Edwards
Frau Stahlbaum – Betty Kavanagh
Fritz – Keith Martin
Luisa – Ann Jenner
The Nutcracker – Wayne Sleep
Spanish Dancers – Georgina Parkinson, Michael Coleman
Arabian Dancers – Gerd Larsen, Ann Howard, Alexander Grant, Gary Sherwood
Chinese Dancers – Kenneth Mason, Keith Martin, Geoffrey Cauley
Russian Dancers – Monica Mason, Jane Robinson, Derek Rencher, Ronald Hynd
Snowflakes – Deanne Bergsma, Monica Mason
Shepherd Dancers – Lesley Collier, Carole Hill, Wayne Sleep
Rat King – Ronald Plaisted