A commission from The Royal Ballet is the tops for a choreographer. Few turn down the chance to work with its able dancers and deep pockets.

Yet you suspect the cheers soon turn to groans when they hear their new work is programmed alongside a Balanchine ballet. However good the choreographer, few bear comparison to the great Russian-American dance maker.

His Serenade opened The Royal Ballet’s triple bill at the Opera House last night and easily eclipsed all else. Kim Brandstrup’s new ballet, his first for the main stage, is a sombre work, heavily loaded with cultural references, from incomplete Soviet films to early drafts of Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot to Prokofiev’s unfinished score for The Queen of Spades.

A sense of unfinished emotional business accompanies the musical and literary ones, with Carlos Acosta a man torn between two women (Laura Morera and Alina Cojocaru). It’s great to see Acosta stretched beyond his normal hero roles, and his duets with Morera and Cojocaru convincingly convey the pain of a never-ending triangle. However, the duets are sketchily linked and feel unconnected to the framing group dances. There are also fussy sets and video projections.

The evening closed with Homage to the Queen, made by Frederick Ashton in 1953 and re-made in 2006. Miyako Yoshida was wonderful as Queen of Water, and Federico Bonelli was on fire.

In rep until 14 May (020 7304 4000, www.roh.org.uk).