Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker is one of today’s most recognizable – and influential – Christmas works. The ballet has an interesting history, though – one that began four years before its premiere. Background How Sleeping Beauty’s Success Led to The Nutcracker In 1888, Ivan Vsevolozhsky (Director of the Imperial Theaters, an opera and ballet theater in St. […]
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In 1940, Prokofiev started writing his ballet Cinderella, Op. 87. Five years later, the work premiered after the composer took time to create his epic opera War and Peace as a response to the German invasion of Russia in 1941. The music in Cinderella is witty, beautiful, and sometimes strange. While I am not going to discuss the full […]
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It’s almost December! I hope you are all enjoying this season of love, family, and twinkling lights. 🙂 I personally love the cold weather – especially the snow and the music! And because Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker” is a winter classic, that got me thinking. Has he written any other music inspired by winter? The answer is yes! So in […]
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Music is hard. Doing this for a career is hard. It’s not your usual 9-5 job that you can forget about at the end of the day. It’s something that permeates your life, the good and the bad, whether you want it to or not. It resonates with and pounds against your soul and it […]
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“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” penned Shakespeare in the late 16th century. The famous love story Romeo and Juliet has been read time and time again, and many a composer has called upon the play’s tragic woes as inspiration for new music. From ballet to film to Broadway, musical interpretations of Romeo and […]
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