First Night: The Sleeping Beauty, Royal Opera House, London

Tchaikovsky's greatest ballet merits a more leisurely pace

Any new production of The Sleeping Beauty is an event of high drama – because of the scale, the cost (more than £500,000 this time) and the huge expectations. The work is not only the greatest of the Tchaikovsky ballets but arguably the greatest, most difficult ballet of all.

So for the opening of Natalia Makarova's Royal Ballet production Darcey Bussell was brave to go ahead as Aurora despite a troublesome foot. She then added an extra dose of high drama by asking for Marianela Nuñez to replace her in Aurora's closing coda.

Nuñez shooting out of the wings instead of Bussell (minutes earlier Nuñez had been the Lilac Fairy) came as a complete surprise. We had been unaware of any problem, although Aurora is a role that, by Bussell's own admission, she finds terrifying. Bussell's variations, including the famous Rose Adagio balances, came off nicely, if unexcitingly. And she may not have brought enough contrast between the early, gauche Aurora and the grandly formal bride, but she had a good-natured directness that was always appealing.

The Italian designer Luisa Spinatelli has collaborated with Makarova for a concept of translucent gauzes and painted architectural backdrops that achieve a lightweight, fairy-tale dimension and downplay courtly magnificence.

At its best, this has the light, rococo refinement of a Watteau painting, aided by graceful, pastoral groupings and elegant costumes. (The fairies' tutus, though, are stolidly plain.) At its worst it becomes patterned wallpaper, as in the truncated panorama scene and arrival at the sleeping castle, further marred by a confusion of characters and incidents.

The cuts and quick transitions satisfy the Royal Opera House's time constraints. They also speed up the storyline. But this is a ballet crying out for space to breathe, for a leisurely pace allowing each episode its full impact.

Makarova said she wanted to blow away the cobwebs, which means that while she has clearly based it on the Konstantin Sergeyev production she grew up with at the Kirov, she has also made changes. Her choreography for Aurora in the vision scene is no improvement but for the last act's Cinderella it definitely is. The prologue sags during the fairies' ensemble dancing, but picks up with the misshapen hag Carabosse and her grisly attendants, although Zenaida Yanowsky in the role needed more projection.

Otherwise, the Royal Ballet just doesn't cut it, the exception being Nuñez's satiny breadth of movement as the Lilac Fairy. The production mixed good and bad, and searched for better performers. Perhaps subsequent casts will provide them.