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Could those familiar with it tell me more about this TV special, which is available on Amazon?

Christmas means Santa in his sleigh...Scrooge visited by ghosts...and Clara's enchanted journey to the Nutcracker's kingdom. Tchaikovsky's beloved holiday ballet comes home with sumptuous sets and costumes and the dazzling dance artistry of the New York City Ballet's Melissa Hayden, Edward Villella and Patricia McBride. Eddie Albert narrates the story of young Clara, who receives a Nutcracker doll as a Christmas gift, then dreams a magical dream: the Nutcracker comes alive and whisks her through a realm of wonders to the palace of the Sugar Plum Fairy. Originally seen by U.S. TV audiences in 1965, this version of The Nutcracker is now ready to become a holiday tradition for you and your family.

This product is manufactured on demand using DVD-R recordable media. Amazon.com's standard return policy will apply.

This disc is expected to play back in DVD Video "play only" devices, and may not play in other DVD devices, including recorders and PC drives.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0221445/

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Also,

A one-hour version of Tchaikovsky's classic ballet, with a somewhat revised storyline reminiscent of "The Wizard of Oz".

That sounds wild, especially with male and female Bluebirds. (The male is Niels Kehlet, in the credits as "Niles Keleth".)

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this taped from tv program has been a kind of curiostiy on the shelves of dance videophiles over the years.

the so-called "Blue Birds" turn out to be the Blue Bird (and Princess Florine) pas de deux from THE SLEEPING BEAUTY, given here as one of the Land of Sweets' divertissements.

overall, it's a made for 1960s tv, one-hour encapsulation loosely based on the Petipa/Ivanov/etc. NUTCRACKER, complete with none-too-high-tech "special effects," if memory serves, such as when the Villella's prince travels to the land sweets with McBride's Clara in a flying sleigh. also, there as some "blue feather" effects framing the Blue Birds number, again if mem. serves, i haven't watched this in years. as noted in the full cast list from the link above, Harald Kruetzberg appears in this program as Snow King/Drosselmeier.

what this seems to be is some individual's(?) off-the-air copy being dubbed for the fee given on Amazon, which means either Amazon isn't very watchful or the copyright isn't ironclad enough to prevent this sort of re-sale.

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I remember seeing this first time 'round, and while it puzzled the bejeezus out of me, it didn't make me actually angry, the way a lot of TV versions of ballet did, and still does. It was a sort of pastiche of several different productions of Nutz from several different German companies with Hayden, Villella and McBride acting as headliners. Kehlet was in from the Danes, but then, he was doing a lot of guesting around that time, too. Copyright would be awfully hard to portion out, if one were to try to do so.

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and if i remember it correctly, isn't melissa hayden supposed to be e. villella's mother or something?? :blink:

Given that these were three of my NYCB heroes, I can't imagine how I missed this show. Maybe it was shown during school term. (TV watching was not allowed.)

Is there a pas de deux? If so, with whom did Hayden (Sugar Plum Fairy) dance? It couldn't have been her son, could it? So the pdd would have to be Villella and McBride. If so, what was left for Hayden. I can't imagine her taking a role like Giselle's mother. "Oh Eddie, please don't dance. It's bad for your heart. Eat one of my low-fat Sugar Plums instead." Etc.:smilie_mondieu: )

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Also saw it when it first aired, is first time I ever saw ballet, or at least a nearly-whole one. I had probably seen things on Ed Sullivan or Bell Telephone. Thought it was enchanting, loved McBride, but had nothing else to compare it with, and haven't seen it since. I would have thought it was a few years earlier, more like 1962, but don't know why it seems a bit older. That's when 'amahl and the night visitors' used to also be shown all the time and 'The Wizard of Oz', the latter may still be, I don't know.

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and if i remember it correctly, isn't melissa hayden supposed to be e. villella's mother or something?? :blink:

Given that these were three of my NYCB heroes, I can't imagine how I missed this show. Maybe it was shown during school term. (TV watching was not allowed.)

Is there a pas de deux? If so, with whom did Hayden (Sugar Plum Fairy) dance? It couldn't have been her son, could it? So the pdd would have to be Villella and McBride. If so, what was left for Hayden. I can't imagine her taking a role like Giselle's mother. "Oh Eddie, please don't dance. It's bad for your heart. Eat one of my low-fat Sugar Plums instead." Etc.:smilie_mondieu: )

I do remember Hayden and Villella dancing the pas de deux in this confusing show, and doing the Ivanov choreography, not the Balanchine. I can recall that with some confidence, as I was learning it (the older version) at the time. Among other TV Nutzes that I recall from that era was a VERY BAD retelling of the story by...wait for it...Mary Tyler Moore, still trying to get her ballet ticket punched after having been the Hotpoint Devil.

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