Today in 1892, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker was first performed at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg.
Tchaikovsky was working on The Nutcracker when he visited the United States in April and May 1891, writing in his diary:
These Americans strike me as very remarkable, especially after the impression the Parisians left upon me: there politeness or amiability to a stranger always savoured of self-interest; whereas in this country the honesty, sincerity, generosity, cordiality, and readiness to help you without any arrière-pensée, is very pleasant. I like this, and most of the American ways and customs, yet I enjoy it all in the same spirit as a man who sits at a table laden with good things and has no appetite. My appetite will only come with the near prospect of my return to Russia.
The New York Herald (1891):
If we are to count up all the men and women of genius now adorning the world, how long would that list be? Should we be able to name the twelve or ten or six such people? Men whose claim to the high honor would not be disputed by even the most skeptical and cold? Let us try. To head the list we should, of course, have Bismarck. Then might come Edison and Tolstoy, Sarah Bernhardt and perhaps Ibsen, with Herbert Spencer and two great composers — Dvořák and Tchaikovsky. The right of Tchaikovsky to a place on the roll will hardly, we think, be denied.
In a November 1892 letter from Boston, Antonin Dvořák wrote:
The Americans expect great things of me and the main thing is, so they say, to show them to the promised land and the kingdom of a new and independent art, in short, to create a national music. If the small Czech nation can have such musicians, they say, why could not they, too, when their country and people is so immense.