The Nutcracker Trivia
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45 free The Nutcracker trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
40 free The Nutcracker trivia questions with answers. The Nutcracker is performed more often than any other ballet, and almost none of it happened the way audiences assume. These 45 questions cover the 1892 premiere that flopped, the concert suite that succeeded first, the brand-new instrument Tchaikovsky imported for one three-minute dance, and the 1954 American staging that turned the whole thing into a Christmas institution. There are questions on the source material too — E. T. A. Hoffmann's genuinely strange 1816 tale, the seven-headed Mouse King, the long story-within-a-story that ballet companies always cut — and on the carved wooden dolls from the Ore Mountains that gave the story its title character. Every answer was checked against a primary reference before publication, so the dates, names and details here are accurate. It works as a solo quiz, a programme-interval argument, or a round for a company that has just done its thirtieth December in a row.
30 of 45 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who composed the music for The Nutcracker?
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
It was his third and last ballet. He also wrote Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty.
Q 02In which year did the ballet premiere?
1892
The Nutcracker premiered on 18 December 1892 in Saint Petersburg, sharing a double bill with a one-act opera by the same composer.
Q 03At which theatre was the ballet first performed?
The Imperial Mariinsky
The Imperial Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg staged the first performance; it was the home of the tsar's Imperial Ballet, whose ballet master Marius Petipa devised the scenario.
Q 04Which choreographer took over when Marius Petipa fell ill?
Lev Ivanov
Lev Ivanov, Petipa's second ballet master since 1885, completed the choreography after Petipa fell ill during rehearsals.
Q 05The ballet's plot comes from an 1844 French adaptation by which writer?
Alexandre Dumas
Alexandre Dumas published his lighter French retelling in 1844, and Petipa's libretto followed the Dumas version rather than the German original.
Q 06Who wrote the 1816 German tale the ballet ultimately derives from?
E. T. A. Hoffmann
E. T. A. Hoffmann, a jurist who also composed, published Nussknacker und Mausekönig in 1816, a far darker tale than the ballet it inspired.
Q 07What is the heroine called in the original German tale?
Marie Stahlbaum
Ballet productions usually rename her. Her godfather gives the family a clockwork castle in both versions.
Q 08What are Drosselmeier's occupations in the original tale?
Judge, clockmaker and inventor
Judge, clockmaker and inventor describes Drosselmeier in the tale: a senior court councillor who builds clockwork toys, including the mechanical castle he gives the children.
Q 09How many heads does the Mouse King have in the original tale?
Seven
Seven heads, each with its own crown, sit on the Mouse King in the 1816 tale; many ballet stagings reduce him to a single head.
Q 10Which section of the original tale is usually cut from ballet adaptations?
The Fairytale of the Hard Nut
The Fairytale of the Hard Nut is a three-chapter story-within-a-story explaining the Nutcracker's curse; Mark Morris's The Hard Nut is a rare staging that includes it.
Q 11Which instrument gives the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy its famous sound?
The celesta
Tchaikovsky had already used it in a symphonic ballad the year before. It had only been invented in 1886.
Q 12Who invented the bell-toned keyboard heard in the Sugar Plum Fairy's dance, and when?
Auguste Mustel in 1886
Auguste Mustel in 1886 patented the instrument in Paris, where his family built harmoniums; Tchaikovsky heard it there in 1891 and ordered one through his publisher.
Q 13How does the keyboard heard in the Sugar Plum Fairy's dance produce its sound?
Hammers strike metal plates
Q 21Where was Tchaikovsky born in 1840?
Votkinsk
Votkinsk, a small ironworks town in Vyatka Governorate (now Udmurtia), was his birthplace; his father managed the state metalworks there.
Q 22What is Tchaikovsky's death in 1893 usually attributed to?
Cholera from unboiled water
He died in Saint Petersburg aged 53, days after conducting his sixth symphony. Rumours of suicide have circulated ever since.
Q 23Which of these is NOT one of Tchaikovsky's three ballets?
Giselle
Giselle is by Adolphe Adam and premiered in Paris in 1841; the other three are Tchaikovsky's complete output of full-length ballets.
Hammers strike metal plates suspended over wooden resonator boxes, so the tone is softer and sweeter than a glockenspiel's exposed bars.
Q 14Which composer named the Sugar Plum Fairy's keyboard instrument in a 1936 work's title?
Béla Bartók
Béla Bartók wrote the 1936 work on a commission from Paul Sacher for the Basel Chamber Orchestra; its slow movement pairs the instrument with piano and harp.
Q 15Which of these dances is NOT part of the Act II divertissement?
The Dance of the Swans
The Dance of the Swans comes from Swan Lake, not this ballet; the Act II divertissement runs through sweets and flowers, from Arabian coffee to the reed flutes.
Q 16In the Act II divertissement, which country does the chocolate dance represent?
Spain
Spain is the chocolate dance's country, a bolero-like number with trumpet and castanets, because chocolate reached Europe through Spanish colonies in the Americas.
Q 17When was the Nutcracker Suite first performed?
March 1892, before the ballet
March 1892, before the ballet reached the stage, the composer conducted the suite at a Musical Society concert in Saint Petersburg, where several numbers were encored.
Q 18How was the first performance of the ballet received?
It was not deemed a success
It was not deemed a success at the premiere: critics found the first act's children tiresome and the Sugar Plum Fairy's dancer, Antonietta Dell'Era, unattractive.
Q 19Whose 1954 staging turned the ballet into an American Christmas institution?
George Balanchine
George Balanchine staged his version for New York City Ballet in 1954, drawing on boyhood memories of dancing in the Saint Petersburg production; it became an annual fixture.
Q 20How many numbers make up the concert suite Tchaikovsky drew from the ballet?
Eight
Eight numbers make up the suite: a miniature overture, the march, the Sugar Plum Fairy's dance, four character dances and one waltz.
Q 24Who was Nadezhda von Meck?
A railway magnate's widow who was his patron
A railway magnate's widow who was his patron, she paid him an allowance of 6,000 roubles a year from 1877 to 1890; they corresponded for years but by agreement never met.
Q 25Which orchestral piece with cannon fire is among Tchaikovsky's best-known works?
The 1812 Overture
The 1812 Overture, written in 1880, commemorates the repulse of Napoleon's invasion and calls for cannon shots and church bells in its finale.
Q 26Which German mountain region is the traditional home of carved nutcracker dolls?
The Erzgebirge
The Erzgebirge, the Ore Mountains along Saxony's border with Bohemia, turned to wooden toy-carving as its silver and tin mining declined.
Q 27Who did traditional German nutcracker dolls depict, and why?
Kings and soldiers, as political satire
Kings and soldiers, as political satire: Saxon village carvers made figures of authority do the humble work of cracking nuts, a quiet joke at the ruling class's expense.
Q 28How did the dolls become popular in America?
Soldiers brought them home after the Second World War
Soldiers brought them home after the Second World War from postings in Germany, and the ballet's rise as an American Christmas fixture in the 1950s cemented the craze.
Q 29In which town did the first mass production of nutcracker dolls begin in 1872?
Seiffen
Seiffen, a village in the Saxon mountains near the Bohemian border, is where Wilhelm Füchtner began commercial nutcracker production in 1872, earning the name father of the nutcracker.
Q 30Which Tchaikovsky work used the Sugar Plum Fairy's bell-toned keyboard before the ballet did?
The Voyevoda
The Voyevoda, a symphonic ballad premiered in Moscow in November 1891, was his first score to use the new keyboard; he tore up the manuscript after the concert.