Tchaikovsky Nutcracker Quotes

Grace has way weirder people than me coming in and out all the time," Dan said. "You, on the other hand, are as boring as it gets. If Grace is worried about anyone cramping her style, I'd point to the gloomy nerd reading about Chucklesky." "Tchaikovsky. He composed the score for the ballet The Nutcracker." Dan thre his hands up. "How am I supposed to get any better at making you sound like a loser if you just do all the work for me?

Dark, cold, and snowbound, Russia has the sort of climate in which the spirit of Christmas burns brightest. And that is why Tchaikovsky seems to have captured the sound of it better than anyone else. I tell you that not only will every European child of the twentieth century know the melodies of The Nutcracker, they will imagine their Christmas just as it is depicted in the ballet; and on the Christmas Eves of their dotage, Tchaikovsky’s tree will grow from the floor of their memories until they are gazing up in wonder once again.

The entire time Tchaikovsky was composing 'The Nutcracker,' Madame Sylvie told Dara once, he was mourning his beloved sister Sasha. He reanimated her through Clara. It explained the strange heaviness of the ballet, its grand melancholy, its piercing nostalgia. And the deathlessness of its vision of childhood, of innocence and escape. Our almost unbearable awareness that everything we're seeing is disappearing even as we watch, fluttering past us as the dancers do, slipping away like smoke. Every year, when the grand -pas de deux- -- the Sugar Plum Fairy and her Prince--begins, the audience's eyes fill with tears. Those shimmering sound of the celesta, like bells clear and pure, and we are flung backward. Time is conquered for a brief, luminous moment. Dara remembered one parent telling her that prayers from the Russian funeral mass were hidden in its opening bars. -We don't hear it-, he told her. -But we feel it nonetheless.-

as Audrius refilled the glasses. “Act one, scene one of The Nutcracker.” “Tchaikovsky!” the German guffawed. “You laugh, mein Herr. And yet, I would wager a thousand crowns that you can picture it yourself. On Christmas Eve, having celebrated with family and friends in a room dressed with garlands, Clara sleeps soundly on the floor with her magnificent new toy. But at the stroke of midnight, with the one-eyed Drosselmeyer perched on the grandfather clock like an owl, the Christmas tree begins to grow. . . .