The Moscow Stanislavsky ballet troupe and orchestra, in the confines of the Festival Hall stage, trotted out their fragment of the True Cross on Wednesday night.

The trick is the statement that this is nearer the score that Tchaikovsky first wrote. This is what Mrs Eddy might call a False Claim, because what Petipa and Ivanov and Riccardo Drigo edited in 1894/95 for the Mariinsky Theatre is much better in shaping score and action which, in Tchaikovsky's original, are unbalanced.

WITH so much children’s entertainment at this time of year it’s refreshing to find something for grown-ups as well as for kids. And the Swan Lake at the South Bank this week is one of those attractive, old-fashioned productions that draw the coach-party audience so much in evidence at the Festival Hall on Wednesday night.
It comes courtesy of the Moscow Stanislavsky Ballet, which brings Vladimir Bourmeister’s 50-year-old Soviet production to London in highly romanticised designs (by Vladimir Arefyev) which sit far better on this stage than they did two years ago when the company made its UK debut.