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Although I'm unequivocally in the second camp, I do acknowledge and appreciate some of the virtues of this production. The decor, to eyes reluctantly accustomed to the Royal Ballet's lushly over-decorated version, is blessedly unobtrusive, and although the friends who attend the Mariinsky Prince's birthday party are just an undifferentiated corps de ballet, they're a very welcome alternative to the crass neo-realistic goings-on in the RB staging. I also enjoyed the character dances in the ballroom scene, done as if by relaxed groups of friends enjoying themselves, rather than pushed to the edge of caricature.

But, but... the first scene was so flat: Daniil Korsuntsev's Siegfried is affable and polite but gives no feeling that there's anything amiss with his life; the tutor dodders and the Jester jests (does he really, really have to be so coy?). Maxim Zyuzin's solo in the pas de trois was very nicely done, with a genuinely restrained classicism; both his partners interspersed what could have been an equally pleasing approach with sudden bursts of obviously effortful straining after unnecessary virtuosity. I blameTchaikowsky, rather than Sergeyev, for the feeling that the big waltz will never end - it's simply too long for its context.

Fortunately the evening shifts to a much higher plane with the arrival of the swans in Scene 2: perfectly schooled, they move and even apparently breathe as one. Their Queen, Uliana Lopatkina, is a mystery to me. Compared with the last time I saw her, she seems somewhat more aware of what's going on around her; but she still internalises so much of her (presumed) emotional journey that I feel no connection with her at all: I watch, interested in and impressed by what she does, but entirely unmoved. I don't understand, either, why Siegfried falls so deeply for her - she gives him so little. I'd love to see her in a production which includes the mime scene in which she explains her plight - would that reveal the key to her interpretation? Till then, for all her perfect control and stately presence, I just can't read her; I envy those who can, for whom she is clearly a goddess. One thing I can be certain about, though, is that this Odette is made for tragedy. The perfunctory dispatch of von Rothbart and the Soviet happy ending, unsatisfying with any cast, seem more out of key than ever - it's impossible to imagine this doom-laden creature settling down to a life of happy domesticity.

Boris Gruzin, a familiar guest conductor with the Royal Ballet, was this time in charge of his own Mariinsky Theatre orchestra - I don't care much for some of his tempi, but II was enchanted by the playing of his harpist in the lakeside adagio, a real highlight in a rather disappointing evening.