Iolanta, Tchaikovsky’s final opera, and The Nutcracker, his final ballet, premiered together at the Mariinsky Theatre in December 1892. Initial critical responses were more positive towards the opera, but it’s Nutcracker that has gone on to become a staple of the repertory, probably the most-performed ballet, a festive cash cow to be milked around the globe every Christmas.

They make an unlikely double bill, but there have been attempts to pair them. In 1992 Opera North teamed up with Matthew Bourne, whose pink-fizz Nutcracker! has gone on to enjoy a successful independent life, while in 2016 Dmitri Tcherniakov staged them in Paris with very mixed results, Nutcracker hobbled by a meteorite.

In Lotte de Beer’s first production as head of the Vienna Volksoper in October 2022, the Dutch director aimed for something different. Note the title: Iolanta and the Nutcracker – not Iolanta and The Nutcracker – for what de Beer has done is to intertwine the two works so that excerpts from Nutcracker, choreographed by Andrey Kaydanovskiy and danced by members of the Wiener Staatsballett and its Akademie, form the blind Iolanata’s inner world.

That inner world is colourful, but decidedly not cutesy. ‘There comes a time in life when you have to decide whether you want to remain a blind princess or see the world in all its imperfection’, said de Beer at the time of the production’s premiere. During the celesta’s playing of the Sugar Plum Fairy’s solo, we see a giant doll stabbing herself with a knife as cupcakes, candy canes and semi-naked toy soldiers collapse, a sinister nutcracker lasciviously lolling his tongue.

Olesya Golovneva’s Iolanta has a dancer ‘double’ – Mila Schmidt – and both are very much part of this inner dreamscape. When Iolanta is ‘cured’ and can see the world for what it is, she is confused: why is nobody dancing? She tries to put the singing cast into dance positions but they don’t understand. Only when, in the closing bars, she invites her ‘dream dancers’ back on to the stage, is there an uplifting resolution.

Golovneva is an expressive artist and she makes for an excellent Iolanta, singing with great sincerity and a fine soprano line. Volksoper favourite Stefan Cerny does a sterling job as her father, King René. Szymon Komasa is a sturdy Ibn-Hakia, here analysing Iolanta during a dance sequence where Cerny dons a mouse-king mask and joins six other dancers in a sinister Waltz of the Snowflakes in which Schmidt’s Iolanta is tossed around. Paging Dr Freud …!

Georgy Vasiliev’s Vaudémont is an ardent suitor, although his tenor is a little pushed at the top, finding a metaphorical double in the Nutcracker Prince (Felipe Vieira) for the Grand pas de deux, attended by snowflakes in paper tutus. Omer Meir Wellber conducts in what was his first season as music director at the Volksoper – a post he had left by the end of December 2023. His pacing is swift, the playing punchy.

Two important things you need to know: as this is the Volksoper, Iolanta is sung in German rather than Russian; and neither work is complete. We get about an hour of music – and the plot – from Iolanta (it’s a travesty that a baritone of Andrei Bondarenko’s pedigree has his single aria cut), and 30 minutes of Nutcracker dances (without the familiar Christmas story). Sometimes the music overlaps, as when the ballet’s ‘Miniature Overture’ crossfades into the woodwind prelude from Iolanta, or points where Iolanta becomes dislocated from her dreams.

So if you’re looking for a single recommendation for either work, then this wouldn’t be it, but de Beer does have something special to say about Iolanta and this production contains some very moving moments.