Le Corsaire at The Royal Opera House, London

Le Corsaire is one of the most skittish ballets in the Kirov's 19th century repertory - a burlesque mix of Byron and Ali Baba, wedged together with some cracking classical dance. But precisely because it's so slippery in tone, Corsaire is one of the hardest works to bring off. Dancers have to rise to its virtuoso challenges, while pitching a comic tone that's halfway between naive romp and affectionate irony. It's up to them whether we relish the ballet's period nonsense or roll our eyes at its absurdities. The roles which most visibly define the ballet's style are its principal characters, the buccaneering hero Conrad, his adoring sidekick Ali and his girlfriend Medora whose abduction by slave traders services most of the plot. Vladimir Shishov and Svetlana Zakharova dancing Conrad and Medora on Monday make an extravagantly leggy, physically extrovert pair of lovers and their flying jumps and extreme suppleness lend a surface charisma to their relationship. But Zakharova in particular lacks sufficient musical and dramatic wit to sustain a real character, and there is a blank too at the heart of their companion Ali. Leonid Sarafanov, a 21-year-old prodigy who has recently joined the Kirov from Kiev is armed with riveting technical skills - an exquisite feline leap, a limpid line and pirouettes that sing, but he's too locked inside the drama of his own dancing to communicate Ali's feral, exotic mystique. It was the soloists and ensemble on Monday who really carried the ballet, and watching the blithe energy and style which flares so lavishly and sometimes so disproportionately through the company ranks you see that the Kirov is still a treasure house of classical performance. Best of all was Anton Korsakov as the slave dealer Lankadem - a barrow boy with a ruthless attitude and fabulous moves and Vladimir Ponomarev as the lecherous Sied Pasha. This last is not a dancing role but Ponomarev's expressions of addled lust as he checks out the new additions to his harem, his venal cunning and fluttering camp pieties add up to a virtuoso performance. Ponomarev is in fact a hero of the Kirov's whole repertory and during the next three weeks he'll be performing in roles as various as the Brahmin in Petipa's La Bayadére and the ancient Shaman in Nijinsky's savage modernist classic Rite of Spring. Ponomarev's ardent and idiosyncratic character acting is as much a part of the Kirov's unique identity as their fabled technique.Domingo's continuing appetite for the new is one of the most extraordinary and most admirable things about him. At the last count, he has sung 119 different roles, a figure unmatched by any tenor in history. He has recorded 97 full-length operas, made more than 50 videos and, in what passes for spare time, he even runs two opera companies, in Los Angeles and Washington. You might suppose that in the world of opera, what Domingo wants, Domingo gets. And that's true. What opera house management would turn him down? Even so, an arrangement like this would not get very far without the cooperation of Covent Garden's new music director, Antonio Pappano. "I'm glad they thought of this," Domingo insists. "Placido didn't twist our arm, I promise you," Pappano agrees gamely, as the two men relax after rehearsal in Pappano's office overlooking the busy Covent Garden piazza. As we talk, a high-bouncing trampolinist periodically soars to window- level view from the piazza below. Well, that's their story, and they're sticking to it. Nevertheless, this new Pagliacci, directed by the legendary veteran Franco Zeffirelli and co-starring singers like Angela Gheorghiu and Dmitri Hvorostovsky, who could normally fill an opera house on their own, is very much a joint project, not a battle for the baton. --Judy Macrell.

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