The Nutcracker and the Mouse King

The Nutcracker and the Mouse King "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King" is a story written in 1816 by German author E. T. A. Hoffmann, in which young Marie Stahlbaum's favorite Christmas toy, the Nutcracker, comes alive and, after defeating the evil Mouse King in battle, whisks her away to a magical kingdom populated by dolls. In 1892, the Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and choreographers Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov turned Alexandre Dumas pere's adaptation of the story into the ballet The Nutcracker, which became one of Tchaikovsky's most famous compositions, and perhaps the most popular ballet in the world.