Glitter, sugar and snowflakes: The Nutcracker sparkles on its return to Covent Garden

To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, when critics are tired of The Nutcracker, they are tired of Christmas. Tchaikovsky’s magical score casts its spell over hundreds of productions worldwide each year, enchanting both old timers and new generations of audiences. We all have our favourite productions, but mine is undoubtedly Sir Peter Wright’s sugar-encrusted confection created for The Royal Ballet in 1984. When the cloaked Drosselmeyer showers the stage with glitter and transforms the Stahlbaums’ Christmas tree and it grows taller and taller to give the impression of Clara shrinking to toy soldier height, the festival season feels properly launched.

And Christmas always feels better when it’s Gary Avis working Drosselmeyer’s magic. He has been with the company since 1989, as Principal Character Artist since 2005, and is now also a Senior Répétiteur. He knows this ballet – and this role – like the back of his hand, yet it never feels tired or jaded. Every Nutcracker brings in audiences seeing the ballet for the first time; Avis never forgets this. He lives and breathes Drosselmeyer and the moment at the final curtain when he was reunited with his nephew Hans-Peter – released from his nutcracker imprisonment – was truly moving. 

The party scene in Wright’s production is wonderfully detailed, with many little stories playing out. David Yudes and Sae Maeda stood out as the life-size soldier and vivandière Drosselmeyer conjures up for entertainment. Finally, with Covid restrictions lifted, the children of the Royal Ballet School returned for the battle scene, well-drilled as toy soldiers or pesky mice. Also back after the hiatus, choristers from the London Oratory School graced the Waltz of the Snowflakes. 

Isabella Gasparini was a delightful Clara, wide-eyed in wonderment, beautifully partnered by James Hay as the Nutcracker, who delivered his mimed narration of the battle adroitly in Act 2. One of Wright’s deft touches in his choreography is to involve both Clara and Hans-Peter in the Act 2 divertissement, rather than having them as passive spectators. Hay was suitably energetic in the Trepak’s cossack steps, while Gasparini joined Mayara Magri’s Rose Fairy in the Waltz of the Flowers. Melissa Hamilton coiled herself around the revised Arabian Dance sinuously.

This year’s opening night cast saw Yasmine Naghdi don the Sugar Plum Fairy’s tiara (a crown usually taken by Marianela Núñez in recent seasons). Naghdi was pristine and poised, especially in her solo variation, her sequence of chainé turns unhurried. Her Prince was Matthew Ball, elegant and trim. Their Grand pas de deux, musically so simple but also magnificent, was meticulously polished. 

The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House under Barry Wordsworth were a little creaky early on, the brass not firing on all cylinders, but by the time the Christmas tree dwarfed the dancers, they settled into their stride. The Act 2 divertissement contained some delicious playing from the woodwind section, music that draws nods of instant recognition, such as the Dance of the Mirlitons. 

Next to me were a mother and her five-year-old daughter attending her first Nutcracker, transfixed, eyes agog. For the grown-ups, it’s a ballet to reconnect us to our childhoods – the excitement of Christmas, the anticipation of presents under the tree, believing in the unbelievable. Long may such magic last. It keeps us young.