“The Nutcracker. Not a Fairy Tale”
Ballet Moscow
Novaya Opera Theatre
Moscow, Russia
February 20, 2026
by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2026 by Ilona Landgraf
The premiere of a new Nutcracker in late February sounded uncommon to my Western ears until I noticed the still festive decorations of Moscow’s streets and the growing piles of snow lining them. Snow also fell in Pavel Glukhov’s The Nutcracker. Not a Fairy Tale and much more fiercely than outside, as if to herald his version’s chilling content, the First World War. Told with warmth and ending happily, Glukhov’s Nutcracker has characteristics of a fairy tale but is recommended for children aged twelve and older. He choreographed it for Ballet Moscow, the home base of which is the Novaya Opera Theatre in the city center.
The story’s hero is Nathaniel, a figure E.T.A. Hoffmann created not for his The Nutcracker and the Mouse King but for his spooky The Sandman, which later served as the basis for Coppélia. A crossbreed between Coppelius, the Nutcracker, and Drosselmeyer, Glukhov’s Nathaniel is a puppet maker who specializes in wooden nutcrackers in military dress.
From his 1938 workplace in the small town Champfleury near Reims in northeast France, he reminisced about his younger self during World War I. The draft separated him from his girlfriend, Clara, but, certain of success, he set off excitedly. Once at the front line, Nathaniel was overtaken by reality. Combat and the death of many of his comrades took a toll on him. Upon his return home after the war’s end, Nathaniel suffered from post-war trauma, which Clara also failed to alleviate. An old woman finally helped her bring Nathaniel back into normal life. In an epilogue, Nathaniel’s thoughts returned to the present time and fast-forwarded to Clara’s pregnancy and their harmonious family life.
Glukhov allocated the role of Nathaniel to two dancers (Andrei Lega portrayed the young Nathaniel, and Maxim Isakov played the adult), extended the stage across the orchestra pit, and divided it into three parts. Each is related to a different (life)time. The front stage belonged to Nathaniel’s present, adult life. A black, transparent curtain separated his workshop from the middle of the stage where the quaint square of Champfleury represented Nathaniel’s memories. The oldest component of the production, Tchaikovsky’s 1892 Nutcracker score, was played on the backmost stage. Here, the Novaya Opera’s orchestra, conducted by Anton Torbeev, sat on Champfleury’s square as if part of its townscape.
While reminiscing about his past, the adult Nathaniel either slipped through one of the doorframes attached to his workshop’s cabinets or raised the curtain by hand. Moving fir trees transformed Champfleury’s square into the forest where he met Clara (Daria Komlyakova) for the first time. A lit Christmas tree turned it into a meeting point for townsfolk of all ages. Here they played, feted, and poked fun at an old woman (an en travestie role danced by Yuri Chulkov) with a disheveled bun, who dragged herself along on crutches like a veteran spider. She was an object of the youths’ hijinks but also their star. Her crutches were used as swiveling swords, darts, spacers, marionette rods, or bars around which she was forced to practice forward rolls. The more the crutches were misused, the more magical they became (Glukhov was similarly inventive with Cecchetti’s cane in Pavlova).
But suddenly, the young men stumbled feebly, and a couple that had been left behind moved awkwardly as if made of wood. Eeriness crept in as nutcrackers fell from Nathaniel’s cabinets as if knocked down by a ghostly hand. But their living counterparts who marched onto the square and danced with their girlfriends cavorted as if going to war was an exhilarating game. Combat began under a creepy white light obscured by the fog of gunshots. But which parties waged war on one another, and where was the line of contact? Everyone looked alike and at times fought an invisible enemy.
The sky had turned blood-red when the Christmas tree fell and searchlights passed over the wounded soldiers as they tried to crawl off the battlefield. Many were killed and assembled into a bunch of bodies that looked like a war memorial. One of them—the young Nathaniel—was alive, though. He tried in vain to heave up a comrade. Only the melody of Tchaikovsky’s snowflake waltz revived the lifeless bodies to a last dance. They rolled and slid across the floor, arched their chests, and whirled their legs through the air as if to imitate snow flurries. Then the movements died down, and the bunch of corpses reassembled.
The heavy rain that opened Act II indicated the thaw in relations. The war was over, and ladies in fluttering, candy-colored skirts, blazers, and huge hats decorated with tulle ribbons evoked a land of sweets. But sweet was only the idleness with which they loitered away their days. It contrasted with the imposing heights to which Tchaikovsky’s music soared. Clara was among them, wearing a neat but sober ivory-colored dress. At times, she peeped out from the canopy of hats like a hatched chicklet.
The score had reached the music for divertissements from all over the world when the ladies’ soldier-boyfriends returned home. Spanish tunes accompanied the happy reunion of three couples. Nathaniel, however, was shell-shocked and indifferent to all care. He ran off while two other soldiers performed a new version of the Arabian dance, lifting and turning the absentminded Clara. A knee-walking drunk soldier stumbled through the Chinese dance, the tails of his coat flapping around his ears. The old woman got entangled in the Russian dance and, bereft of her crutches, suddenly turned like a dervish. Her glee made me think of Widow Simone from Ashton’s La fille mal gardée.
As her crutch stopped Clara’s walk, both women linked arms and merged with the overall hurly-burly. We don’t know what the old woman whispered into Clara’s ears, but Clara thereafter had the key to healing Nathaniel. Although he relapsed once, his and Clara’s limp bodies melted in a pas de deux as if made for one another. The contrast between their softly gliding limbs and the power of their lifts was amazing.
All joined them, and even Korbeev left his conductor’s stand to welcome the red spring flowers along the front stage. From there, he guided his musicians through the last bars of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker.
| Link: | Website of the Novaya Opera Theatre | |
| Photos: | 1. | Daria Komlyakova (Clara), Maxim Isakov (Nathaniel as an adult), and ensemble, “The Nutcracker. Not a Fairy Tale” by Pavel Glukhov, Ballet Moscow 2026 |
| 2. | Daria Komlyakova (Clara), Andrei Lega (Nathaniel in his youth), and ensemble, “The Nutcracker. Not a Fairy Tale” by Pavel Glukhov, Ballet Moscow 2026 | |
| 3. | Maxim Isakov (Nathaniel as an adult), Andrei Lega (Nathaniel in his youth), and Daria Komlyakova (Clara); “The Nutcracker. Not a Fairy Tale” by Pavel Glukhov, Ballet Moscow 2026 | |
| 4. | Maxim Isakov (Nathaniel as an adult) and Andrei Lega (Nathaniel in his youth), “The Nutcracker. Not a Fairy Tale” by Pavel Glukhov, Ballet Moscow 2026 | |
| 5. | Ensemble, “The Nutcracker. Not a Fairy Tale” by Pavel Glukhov, Ballet Moscow 2026 | |
| 6. | Maxim Isakov (Nathaniel as an adult), Andrei Lega (Nathaniel in his youth), and ensemble; “The Nutcracker. Not a Fairy Tale” by Pavel Glukhov, Ballet Moscow 2026 |
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| 7. | Daria Komlyakova (Clara) and ensemble, “The Nutcracker. Not a Fairy Tale” by Pavel Glukhov, Ballet Moscow 2026 |
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| 8. | Andrei Lega (Nathaniel in his youth), “The Nutcracker. Not a Fairy Tale” by Pavel Glukhov, Ballet Moscow 2026 | |
| 9. | Andrei Lega (Nathaniel in his youth) and Daria Komlyakova (Clara), “The Nutcracker. Not a Fairy Tale” by Pavel Glukhov, Ballet Moscow 2026 | |
| 10. | Daria Komlyakova (Clara), Andrei Lega (Nathaniel in his youth), and ensemble; “The Nutcracker. Not a Fairy Tale” by Pavel Glukhov, Ballet Moscow 2026 | |
| 11. | Andrei Lega (Nathaniel in his youth) and Daria Komlyakova (Clara), “The Nutcracker. Not a Fairy Tale” by Pavel Glukhov, Ballet Moscow 2026 | |
| all photos © Novaya Opera Theatre/Batyr Annadurdyev | ||
| Editing: | Kayla Kauffman |
