On the opening night of The Nutcracker season at the Royal Ballet and Opera, the choreographer Sir Peter Wright came onstage after the performance of his well-loved production that he created in 1984. The Royal Ballet wanted to celebrate his 99th birthday, which is tomorrow, 25 November 2025.
Below are some of Sir Peter’s thoughts, as recounted in his 2016 autobiography ‘Wrights and Wrongs’, on The Nutcracker ballet.
The Nutcracker is a ballet that tends to divide audiences. For many, it is a once-a-year family excursion, a seasonal treat for tiny tots dressed up in tulle and tiaras.
Then there are others who consider their tastes too sophisticated to overdose on sugared almonds and the other sweets depicted in the magical kingdom.
The Nutcracker is the exception among the classic ballets in that it never had a satisfactory story from the outset. This provides the producer with considerable scope. The original scenario was based on Hoffmann’s Nutcracker and the Mouse King, which was constructed like two separate stories with scarcely any connection.
In the ballet, the leading characters do virtually no dancing and the leading dancers have virtually no place in the story. A producer has to decide who motivates the story, Clara or Drosselmeyer. Is Clara a ten-year-old interested in toys – or a 16-year-old adolescent interested in boys?
To what degree does the producer reconcile the two acts? How far does he indulge every small girl’s identification with Clara and her desire to become the sugar Plum fairy? That is a role to which many dancers aspire, and while companies may be able to field a dozen or so sugar Plums during the course of a long Christmas season, it is a role that demands a real ballerina. Very few dancers have that.
Graham Spicer, aka ‘Gramilano’, is a writer, director and photographer based in Milan. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy. His articles have appeared in various publications from Woman’s Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the Danza in Italia column for Dancing Times magazine. Graham was the historical advisor on Codice Carla, the 2023 documentary on Carla Fracci.
Graham also works as a dance photographer, and his photos have appeared in many books, theatre programmes, and magazines, including Dancing Times, Dance Spirit and Ballet2000, as well as all the major Italian newspapers.
He is a member of the Dance Section of The Critics’ Circle.