This Christmas the Royal Ballet’s Nutcracker was first off the mark, pipping Matthew Bourne’s clever Nutcracker! spoof, which is at Sadler’s Wells from Thursday, and English National Ballet’s version designed by the cartoonist Gerald Scarfe, which returns to the Coliseum on December 19. Both have plenty to recommend them but neither can begin to compete with the sincere, heartfelt warmth of Peter Wright’s production at Covent Garden.

Saturday’s opening matinee rekindled the notion that this staging, from 1984, really is as good as it gets. There are always people in any audience, particularly children, who have never seen The Nutcracker before. It is to them that we must defer. During the interval I overheard one young girl respond to her mother: “No, that wasn’t just ‘nice’, that was unbelievable!”

She’s absolutely right. This is a class act from start to finish; including the most glorious Christmas tree of them all. It is the designer Julia Trevelyan Oman’s pièce de résistance.

Tchaikovsky’s music for this scene, when the family’s living room is transformed into a magical realm where dreams come true, is some of the most majestic ever written for ballet. The tree grows and grows, rising to the skies while taking each and every one of us back to childhood memories of a perfect Christmas past. Trevelyan Oman tops it off with a shimmering shower of golden glitter. Cue the tear ducts.

Wright’s production is also filled with an abundance of subtle details that will probably not be spotted by first-time viewers intent on the central action but which add to the overall feeling of happiness.

Wright, who is now 81, is a master showman and his renditions of the classics, especially this Nutcracker, are to be cherished. This season the Royal Ballet is fielding seven casts. The first of them featured Alexandra Ansanelli as the Sugar Plum Fairy, with Valeri Hristov as her partner. Both were in fine form. Yet, except for hardcore ballet fans it doesn’t matter which cast you see. It is the production itself that is the star.

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