Dear Jeremy Isaacs:

Thank you for your letter to audiences published in the vastly expensive programme book for Cinderella. It is good to see you as general director putting a brave face on your defense of the Royal Ballet’s repertoire for its range as well as its quality...

What some of us wonder is whether you realise that when we say your offerings look to us both limited and conservative, that criticism is based not just on comparisons elsewhere but on a longer experience than yours of the more varied and more daring programmes that this company used to present.

However, this is the season of good will, so let us be grateful for being allowed another good ballet by Frederick Ashton hard on the heels of The Dream - even if there is to be nothing more all season by the first and best of the company’s choreographers.

Too bad that you are stuck with David Walker’s vulgar designs for Cinderella; at least they look as costly as they doubtless were. And it is not your fault that some of the heart has been allowed to go out of the performances; did you ever see Cinderella in the days when gales of laughter swept continually through the auditorium? There was actually less slapstick at that time: I do not remember Ashton, as one of the stepsisters, needing to roll down the stairs as he entered the ballroom.

More subtlety is needed, not more farce. For an idea of what is missing, you might watch David Bintley, the only one among six men playing the stepsisters at your three opening performances who remembers to give the role some real femininity.

Not only are there fewer laughs nowadays; there used to be a furtive tear or two for these characters and others. Look at your jester: Kumakawa and Peter Abegglen both do some brilliant steps in this role, but it has become like those Russian Swan Lake jesters, all surface flash. Whatever happened to the mysterious sadness that used to be half-hidden beneath the bravura?

Congratulations, however, on the way the corps de ballet are dancing (do I detect the hand of Michael Somes supervising rehearsals?). And your orchestra, with Barry Wordsworth conducting, is playing much better than often used to be the case on ballet nights.

The company has some very good young men: Bruce Sansom and Stuart Cassidy are both excellent as the prince; full of spirit and romance, and Michael Nunn needs only a little more dash to equal them. But lyrical ballerinas are harder to come by, and your aspirant ballerinas have all been concentrating on other qualities, drama or zest, rather than lyricism.

Even Viviana Durante got it wrong on opening night, chopping up the long flowing phrases of Cinderella’s dances and making the role too brittle. So for heaven’s sake hold on to your regular guest artist, Nina Ananiashvili; her crystal clear technique is joined to a wonderful musical quality.

No, Ananiashvili is not "like" Margot Fonteyn, but she brings her own equivalent of the wholeness, the harmony and the radiance which Fonteyn used to have. She certainly does not neglect the character: pathos, fun and romance all shine in her dancing.

Just as with another guest star, a few years ago, Gelsey Kirkland, here is an outsider showing something of the old Royal Ballet style which our own dancers have forgotten. Let us hope we can all learn something from her.