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Well, yes. A number of performances are already sold out. Another message seems to be that the main business of the company is presenting something safe and familiar, even over familiar, which will not frighten any horses and get the crowds in. One justification which might be put forward is that the dizzying prices at which the ROH can sell tickets for Swan Lake subsidise the prices for the mixed bills, where the odd new work might just sneak in (approximately half the price for an equivalent ticket) . I accept this argument up to a point, but I think we’ve gone past that point now. I’m not suggesting the company shouldn’t be putting on Swan Lake: It’s a great work, but does not need to appear quite so often while other works are unperformed. This season the balance seems to have swung too far towards the safe, known and predictable. I wish I could look forward to the rest of the season with a keener sense of anticipation.

Well, off the soapbox now, and let us return to the performance. Odette and Price Siegfried were played by the recently married Marianella Nunez and Thiago Soares. Both had appeared together in this work last season. This performance seemed a step forward for Soares: he had always been an ardent lover but certain gestures had acquired greater depth and potency. He touched her arm with wonder and hesitancy as it if was something infinitely strange and precious. Nunez is a watchful, cautious Odette, whose trust has to be earned and who melts only slowly to Soares’s fiery ardour. She is in full technical command of the role and always appears to have all the time in the world, nothing is ever rushed or hurried.

Nunez’s Odile is rather more interesting that the usual heartless vamp. She plays it as a Daddy’s girl and her interactions with Rothbart are crucial and clearly put over – she wants so much to please him. Soares as Siegfried has to woo her away from him, just as he courted Odette in Act 2. This seemed rather more subtle that the usual villainous glamour. Not that Nunez stinted particularly on the usual technical fireworks with a particularly memorable balance in the pas de deux.

There were fine performances elsewhere. Lauren Cuthberstson, Yuhui Choe and Jose Martin featured in the Act 1 pas de trois. In Act Three there was a particularly sparkling Neapolitan dance from Ricardo Cervera and Laura Morera. Unlike some first nights at this address the performance did not look as if it would have benefited from more rehearsal – this is, I suppose, the up side of producing something which is so familiar and so recently in the repertoire. This was despite quite a few injuries and changes announced on the cast slip. The students appearing as swans in Act 1 looked younger and tinier than in previous years.

Time has not reconciled me to the Yolanda Sonnabend designs which as the years pass look ever more like cheap and nasty Christmas decorations, particularly in Act Three. Fortunately the lakeside scenes are more palatable, and this is where the production makes it greatest mark. The Royal’s corps of swans looked as well drilled as ever and finally turned on Rothbart at the end with elegant fury.