The Nutcracker and the Mouse King (uncut)

On Christmas Eve, a girl named Marie receives an unusual toy as a gift — a wooden Nutcracker. At night, she becomes a witness to magical events: the toys come to life, and the Nutcracker engages in battle with the army of the Mouse King. Marie helps him achieve victory and gradually learns that the Nutcracker is actually an enchanted prince.

Following the hero, Marie enters a fantastic world full of wonders and adventures, where the story of the prince's curse and his salvation unfolds. The fairy tale blends reality and magic, telling about the power of kindness, faith, and sincere love that can break any spell.

Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann (1776–1822) was a German writer, the foremost representative of Romanticism, as well as a composer and conductor, artist, and lawyer. Hoffmann was born in the Prussian city of Königsberg, into the family of a royal lawyer. From an early age, he showed a penchant for music and drawing, and at 14 he became an apprentice to an organist. However, his parents had other views on Ernst's future, and at 16, continuing the family traditions, he entered university to study law, which he completed successfully. But while working in the court, Hoffmann continued to be a composer in music and literature; at times he held the position of conductor, theater director, and set designer, one of his singspiels was staged at the theater. Alas, all attempts to make a living solely through art led to failures. Hoffmann had to lead a double life: he served as a civil servant, dedicating all his free time to creativity. In the 46 years granted to him, the great romantic wrote numerous novellas and three novels, as well as two operas, a ballet, piano sonatas, etc. — in honor of his beloved Mozart, he even changed one of his names from Wilhelm to Amadeus. A prominent feature of Hoffmann's poetics is that he does not separate phantasmagoria from the mundane; his images, according to critic V. Solovyov, "appear not as ghosts from another, alien world, but as another side of the same reality." 

Hoffmann wrote quite a few extraordinary scary tales: "The Golden Pot," "The Sandman," "Little Zaches, Called Cinnober," but "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King" occupies a special place even after 200 years. It was first published in a Berlin collection of children's fairy tales in 1816, just before Christmas, and later became part of the anthology "The Serapion Brethren." The story of the animated dolls was inspired by the author's interactions with the children of his friend and colleague Julian Gitzig; Fritz and Marie were their real names. It is believed that the character of Godfather Drosselmeyer, an unattractive but skillful master of mechanisms, was modeled after Hoffmann himself. 

In Russia, Hoffmann's works began to be read only after his death. In 1835, the first translation of the tale was published under the title "The Doll Mr. Nutcracker."