For those who think that the Kingdom of the Shades is the only reason to see La Bayadère, the Royal Ballet’s production is essential viewing. As staged by Natalia Makarova, Petipa’s grand and exotic tale of love and murder in legendary India is an entertaining spectacle that wraps a colourful melodrama around the luminous vision of the Shades.

This ballet has everything: a driven narrative, passionate characters, a lavish staging (although not as lavish as its 1877 St Petersburg premiere), an archetypal 19th-century score and classical choreography that takes the breath away. What a perfect opening it makes to the Royal Ballet’s new season.

It’s a feast on every front. Pier Luigi Samaritani’s sets are splendidly lush, the vegetation as sumptuous as the architecture. Yolanda Sonnabend’s costumes are gorgeous, with their jewelled trim, bare midriffs and fabulous head gear. Valeriy Ovsyanikov conducts the Minkus score with a go-for-broke enthusiasm and devotion to its place in dance history. And the corps de ballet shine as the Shades, a perfect hallucination embodying Solor’s love for the murdered Nikiya, the temple dancer he betrayed.

This is a story raging with the heated emotions of an old-fashioned love triangle – Nikiya’s love for Solor, Gamzatti’s jealousy of that fact, Solor’s guilty conscience because he wants both women – and the opening-night cast took to it with fervour. Tamara Rojo, as Nikiya (the bayadère of the title), initially presents a serious young lady bound by her duty as a temple dancer and profoundly shocked by the High Brahmin’s inappropriate declaration of love. And then Rojo hits us with a flood of happiness as Solor appears to her; then a well of melancholy at his betrayal; and a vision of sublime otherwordly spirit when, now dead, she reappears in his fevered imagination to rekindle their passion. Throughout Rojo gives us dancing of exquisite shape, touching dramatic nuance and exceptional technical flair. As Solor (“the noblest warrior in the land”) Carlos Acosta has to be sexy and brave, which is second nature to his dancing, but he also has to be true to Nikiya yet unable to resist the lure of Gamzatti, the glamorous princess to whom he is betrothed, always a tricky conundrum for a hero. Acosta manages it all with tremendous panache, and, when he and Nikiya are reunited in heaven at the end, you feel as if Acosta has earned the right.

In every way, Marianela Nuñez glitters as Gamzatti, the rich-bitch princess determined to get her claws into Solor, even if it means dispatching her rival with a poisonous snake. And Gary Avis brings a remarkable dignity to the High Brahmin, a character role that he imbues with a magnetic power.

Box office: 020-7304 4000. To Oct 27 2007

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