Onegin, Royal Ballet, Covent Garden, review People who are desperate to show just how seriously they take ballet are sometimes snooty about John Cranko's Onegin, a classic case of Getting It Wrong. True, Cranko was not as mesmerisingly dark as Kenneth MacMillan, nor was he quite the visual poet that Frederick Ashton was, and nor did he rewrite ballet's rule book the way those two geniuses did. He is, however, a choreographer of tenderness and lyricism, and his Onegin - created in 1965 for the Stuttgart Ballet, after Pushkin's tragic verse novel - is a lovely piece. Although three acts long, it tells its story economically and includes love duets that are not only very pretty but also, in one dream sequence, genuinely startling. What's more, in its account of an arrogant idiot who squanders a golden romantic opportunity, and of a desirable woman who ultimately settles for a bore in the name of social and financial security, the tragedy rings as true today as ever. Cranko's is in fact just one of three versions of the tale on offer this winter, along with Tchaikovsky's great opera, also at Covent Garden, and Deborah Colker's extraordinary modern-dance account, at the Barbican. The Royal Ballet's performance was a superb one, eliciting, I suspect, a silent but profound sigh of relief from the entire audience a few minutes in. To stand in for Johan Kobborg - sadly off with a back injury - and to take the stage with the brilliant Dane's longtime on-stage and real-life partner, Alina Cojocaru, is not a task for the faint-hearted. But my how capably and charismatically the long-limbed Canadian Jason Reilly (on loan from Stuttgart) acquitted himself, and what an immensely credible couple they make. From his very first, eloquently disdainful turn, his slightly sinister loftiness as Onegin is the perfect foil for the impeccably observed innocence of Cojocaru's Tatiana. Her tentative, hummingbird bourrées around him here are especially heartbreaking, and - by total stylistic contrast - the couple are fearlessly knitted together in that libidinous fantasy of Scene 2, he three-times whipping her high around him with gasp-inducing speed. In Act 3, they expertly reverse their characters" balance of power, her new-found confidence expressed in a perfect display of legato dancing, and he so visibly deflated that, despite his earlier awfulness, you do feel for him. Cojocaru's astounding, climactic portrayal of a woman whose head is telling her one thing, but her heart and body another, is yet another reminder of what an all-time great the tiny Romanian is. As the differently ill-starred couple Lensky and Olga, Steven McRae and Akane Takada are enchanting in their mutual devotion, even if his is not a role that lets him show his full mettle. I wonder, too, if - exquisitely as she dances Tatiana's sister - Takada should give an early hint of the coquettishness that lets Olga casually flirt with Onegin later on. When this happens, it seems jarringly out of character. Still, these are tiny cavils in a performance that also saw the corps generally dancing as one and the Royal Opera House orchestra making a fine job of the Tchaikovsky/Stolze score. What a classy and stirring night out. In rep until Feb 8. Tickets: 020 7304 4000; royalopera.org