Recreating an English beauty

There was a gentle, almost dreamy quality to The Royal Ballet last night.

Wearing the prettiest, gauziest costumes, and dancing with tender conviction, the company was all soft splendour as it premiered its new Sleeping Beauty.

The cut-glass glamour of its last Beauty, premiered only three years ago, had gone, as had the extravagant manner of the one before that (from 1994).

In their place comes a downy dreamscape, an unmistakably English Arcadia that feels like a genuflection to a more innocent age. And that, in effect, is what it is.

To celebrate its 75th birthday, the Royal Ballet's new Beauty is a careful restaging of its famous 1946 production.

That was the work of Royal Ballet founder Ninette de Valois, Russian bigwig Nicholas Sergeyev, and designer Oliver Messel who together created a new British tradition from an old Russian one.

People who remember it still talk in hushed tones, and it's easy to see why when you think it was staged in an age of austerity by a fledgling ballet company barely 15 years old.

Messel's sets and costumes, recreated and extended by Peter Farmer, still seduce the eye. Their muted colours give a misty hue, while the details add depth and life.

It must have cost a fortune and you can't help running a cost-benefit analysis. You also wonder if The Royal Ballet should only look back.

The sets and costumes alone look almost worth the investment. The dancing is similarly lush and refined, with the corps velvety and the wicked fairy, Carabosse (Genesia Rosato), and the good Lilac Fairy (Marianela Nuñez) clean and clear in their mime roles.

Rosato is especially good. Carabosse is often a cartoon combination of false nails and hair extension, but she was a regal, bitter woman.

The five fairies who bless the infant Princess Aurora were brightly danced, while Isabel McMeekan was a very foxy Act II Countess.