The Prologue to The Sleeping Beauty in the Royal Ballet’s handsome production, now returned to Covent Garden, is one of the marvels of ballet. It is an astonishing machine, designed to ravish the eye by its ingenuities, the entries and ensembles of the dancers showing the perfect interaction of each part, harmonious in their symmetries. Patterns open out to frame solos, while chaos, in the appearance of Carabosse, is set against the order of court ritual.

Sarah Lamb and Ivan Putrov

On Friday night, the inevitability of this scene was profoundly satisfying. It also brought incidental delights: Marianela Nuñez’s radiant Lilac Fairy, dance as serenely rewarding as mime; Yuhi Choe making adorable sense of the difficult first Fairy variation; Sergey Polunin, one of the Fairy cavaliers, offering classical dancing magnificent in its clarity and power. (He was later to appear to no less splendid effect in the Florestan trio).

There are many other delights, and problems, about this ultimate test of academic classicism, for Beauty must stand or fall with its Aurora. On Friday, Sarah Lamb was agreeable, well-mannered. She has a pretty and unforced technique, the challenges to the ballerina’s physical skills easily met, the dance gently charming. But the portrait, emotionally as well as technically, was too soft-grained, too jeune fille. I have, over the past decades, seen almost every notable interpreter of this role (and a gaggle of pretenders to the throne) and the ideal performances have acknowledged the ballerina’s need to proclaim the nobilities of classic dance. Lamb has yet to show this to us, while her Prince, Ivan Putrov, seemed harried by his role’s academic demands.

The production is well-reasoned in almost everything save the cuts in text and score for the Hunting scene. The court dances and the peasants’ farandole can have great charm, and are significant both as drama and as part of Tchaikovsky’s structure, while the Prince’s interpolated solo is inauthentic, unnecessary: his earlier mime is sufficient indication of character. At this performance the Bluebirds, Laura Morera and Steven McRae, were outstanding: Morera phrasing ravishingly, McRae so clear in style, so elegant in manner, meriting every superlative. He shows dancing of greatness: I do not recall a finer interpretation.