Ratmansky's "Firebird," for American Ballet Theater Firebird Natalia Osipova of American Ballet Theater in the title role at the Metropolitan Opera House. Parts of Alexei Ratmansky's "Firebird" make me wish that I were a child again, with him as a parent or godfather telling old stories with new twists and dimensions. At its best, his "Firebird," which had its New York premiere with American Ballet Theater on Monday night at the Metropolitan Opera House, feels timeless and modern, an ancient myth for the children, with sexual and psychological layers that appeal to adult intelligence today. Like that of older "Firebird" ballets, his story has Ivan capture a Firebird, who buys her freedom with a magic feather; he later finds love but is thwarted by the sorcerer Kaschei until his feather summons the Firebird and wins him victory and marriage. But whereas previous Ivans have become ruler of Russia, this one undergoes a more psychological journey. There are also, however, central points where Mr. Ratmansky's storytelling is entirely disappointing, and others where it is simply unclear. In many episodes he strains gracelessly hard against the music and in few does he show his best gifts as a dance maker. The title role, though danced with many brilliant jumps on Monday by the illustrious Natalia Osipova, proves the most anonymous of its four chief characters. Stravinsky's complete 1910 score, employed by Mr. Ratmansky, is a masterpiece of narrative. Moment by moment it's suspenseful, evocative and poetic; each phrase conjures up picturesque marvels; it covers a vast span of colors, moods, energies. On Monday, conducted by Charles Barker, the company's orchestra was at its most luminous. Stravinsky composed this score in intimate collaboration with the choreographer Michel Fokine for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. Fokine's version today is presented by the Mariinsky Ballet of St. Petersburg and by the Royal Ballet of London. New York is best acquainted with George Balanchine's staging of Stravinsky's abbreviated 1945 score, with designs that derive from a version by Marc Chagall, for New York City Ballet. Some of the most originally successful aspects of the new "Firebird" come from Simon Pastukh's scenery, a changing psychological dreamscape. He and Mr. Ratmansky deviate from other stagings by adding a prologue in which Ivan, the hero, dances out frustrations in a dilapidated room. Fokine's and Balanchine's Ivan was effectively a non-dance role, only acting and partnering; the way Marcelo Gomes's virile, troubled hero makes rhythms that have no counterpart in the music is a foretaste of much that makes the ballet's choreography musically uncomfortable. The first exterior scene is brilliantly ambiguous, a landscape of strange forked objects that might be fire-tipped cactuses or giant hands with scarlet nails, and which, like surreal smokestacks, emit odd puffs of smoke. This setting or forest is visited not by one Firebird but by a flock of them, dressed in scarlet bodysuits with wild-plumed headdresses and bustles. Costumes are by Galina Solovyeva; it's a pity that neither her designs nor Brad Fields's lighting makes the title character distinctive. Ms. Osipova's Firebird exerts none of the psychological force of the other main characters. Why should we believe she cannot escape her captor, Ivan? She looks free to depart most of the time. Later the locale is visited by a gang of spiky, conflicted maidens with dresses and hair in matching emerald green; Ivan finds love with one of them (Simone Messmer, with an appealingly impulsive oddness). When the sorcerer Kaschei arrives, the scenery realigns itself, marvelously, into a palatial interior with Romanesque vaulting. Kaschei, traditionally a nondancing grotesque who despotically holds his realm in terrified thrall, is here a vain, highly mobile figure of bizarre glamour with black robes, green gloves and green headdress. His hold over the maidens is magical but also abusive. Whenever you think this Kaschei is a marvelous role for David Hallberg - he too emits puffs of magic smoke, and his dangerousness is partly that of a control freak whose power is threatened - it fizzles. The main struggle for power between him and the Firebird is a trite quartet in which he and Ivan take turns to partner the Firebird and the Maiden to no great effect. This program is repeated on Wednesday, and "Firebird" returns to repertory in a double bill with "The Dream," from June 21 to June 23, at the Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center; (212) 352-6000, abt.org.