The adults regard the spiritual world of children as a carefree realm of fantasies and games. I cannot speak for you, my respected audience, but I myself remember very well how often in my childhood I used to take oaths that when I grew up I would never, ever forget what it means to be a child. Unfortunately, I did not succeed in this good intention… The loss of this remembrance is one of the major life losses. Can it be predestined by the very human nature, by the inherent essence of human memory? However, having re-read E.T.A. Hoffmann's fairy tale 'Nutcracker and the Mouse King', I was amazed how precisely, how poignantly and how, at times, ruthlessly the great romantic analyses the impulses of children's souls. His research (long before Freud) removes the flavour of idealization from the child's psychology and allows to have a deeper insight into the miracle named 'CHILDHOOD'.

All things considered, our ''Nutcracker" is, first and foremost, a fairy-tale. This fairy-tale is about little Marie, who dreams of love and happiness; about how those dreams helped her take an imaginary trip to the house of Councilor Stahlbaum; about Councilor Stahlbaum and his wife being turned into the Mouse King and Queen by Herr Drosselmeister; about Herr Drosselmeister who gave Marie a wonderful doll resembling himself in some mysterious way; and about that doll (we will call it Nutcracker)who happened to become Marie's first true love. The main thing is that everything in this story turns out to be different from what it seems at first sight