“Jewels has been an unequivocal and rapturous ‘success’.” So wrote Lincoln Kirstein in 1967 as he surveyed the triumph of his and Balanchine’s New York City Ballet in this knock-out example of what he called one of Balanchine’s “applause-machines”.

On Friday night, Jewels entered the Royal Ballet repertory and the machine still generated applause, rapturous and (mostly) deserved. We see three plotless works. Emeralds is set to theatre music by Gabriel Fauré, Rubies is Balanchine’s realisation of Stravinsky’s 1929 Capriccio for piano and orchestra; Diamonds uses the last four movements of Tchaikovsky’s third symphony.

It is easy to see that in Emeralds the choreographer uses the exquisite refinement of Fauré’s music to draw a portrait of feminine grace, set in that shaded greenery that touched French poetry and music as the 19th century ended. There is a solo, all womanly nuance and wit, given to the leading ballerina and here taken with a sensuous charm by Tamara Rojo, who rivals the unerring musical sensibilities of Violette Verdy for whom it was first made. It is the finest thing in the evening. This section is, though, also the design tragedy of the evening. Costuming throughout is that originally made by Karinska in 1967, but Jean-Marc Puissant has been entrusted with settings. These contrive to be obtrusive, distracting. “Emeralds” boasts dull draperies, gauzy curtaining sequined at the hem; mysterious grey frames that might serve to hide hot-water pipes; and two pendant Art Nouveau gasoliers.

There follows the Stravinsky Capriccio, which the company has danced before. Against Puissant’s obstreperous homage to a 1930s Odeon, the dance kicks and races, pelvises thrust forward, energy levels high, with Sarah Lamb giving a sharp-witted performance as the leading woman. It is a fine reading, matched by Zenaida Yanowsky as the second soloist, cutting big swathes of dance with uncompromising verve. Carlos Acosta inherits a role created on Edward Villella, that most vivid of danseurs. Acosta, big in effects, yet misses Villella’s streetwise force, his James Cagney air.

Diamonds is a homage to the St Petersburg in which the forces of the Imperial Ballet moved with an aristocratic grandeur . Beneath Puissant’s lop-sided chandeliers and swathes of curtaining, the forces of the Royal Ballet, led by a mis-cast Alina Cojocaru (too little scale; too little mystery) and Rupert Penne-father, tripped their ever-so-nice way. It is the hardest section of Jewels to bring off, demanding uncompromising authority, and some idea of how to dance a Polonaise. These qualities were little evident. But Jewels is a great work: with pruning of its decors, and a greater sense of Petersburg’s presence in Diamonds, Balanchine’s applause-machine can have its full and tremendous effect.