If you’ve got it, flaunt it. At least that’s what the Royal Ballet is doing with its three-year-old Sleeping Beauty staging. There are almost two dozen performances of it scheduled in the current run, and who can blame them? This is an enchanting and magnificent production that honours the work’s 19th-century Russian roots along with its special place in postwar British ballet.

It may be the most sumptuous fairytale you have ever seen. The stunning vision of Petipa’s haut-classical choreography is matched by the glowing spectacle of Oliver Messel’s original 1946 designs (The Sleeping Beauty reopened the Royal Opera House after the Second World War, a blaze of opulence at a time of austerity). And though Peter Farmer’s new costumes are so pale they look in need of a blood transfusion, it’s the full visual panoply that astounds.

The production, staged by Monica Mason and Christopher Newton (after Ninette de Valois and Nicholas Sergeyev), moves beautifully, a vibrant, exhilarating, deliriously classical feast for corps de ballet, soloists and principals alike. And when you have the Russian conductor Valeriy Ovsyanikov in the pit, the music soars. He mines Tchaikovsky’s great score for every ounce of sweeping grandeur and dramatic expectation.

Our first night Aurora was Sarah Lamb, here returning to a starring role after almost a year off due to injury. Her fans were out in force, showering the stage with flowers as she took her curtain call. Lamb’s first entrance had been a little tentative, as if her teenage princess wasn’t quite sure why all these fabulous people were gathered together in her honour. But Lamb quickly dispelled any doubts as she took up the challenge of the Rose Adagio, delivering Aurora’s famous balances so slowly that the orchestra almost ran out of music. Her subsequent solo was gentle and very girlish; her Vision Scene was full of creamy textures; her Grand Pas elegant and commanding.

Ivan Putrov was her Prince, and rather a haughty one at that, though when he was confronted by the sleeping Aurora he very sweetly worked out that the way to wake her was with a kiss. His own dancing flowed with assurance. As the Lilac Fairy, Marianela Nuñez was the heart of the ballet, the fairy godmother whose beneficent power can overturn the evil curse that sends Aurora to sleep for a hundred years (as long as the right man comes along, of course). Nuñez is a generous and happy dancer who transmits these qualities in a way no other ballerina can; her Lilac shimmered over the entire production. Genesia Rosato was incredibly glamorous as the wicked witch Carabosse, while Laura Morera (with help from Steven McRae) managed to make the Bluebird variation a proper little ballet all its own.

Box office: 020-7304 4000, to Jan 23

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