This was the opening night of Aylesbury’s splendid new theatre and a very swish event it was.

David Suchet and Simon Callow were the first performers to tread its virgin boards as they wished the Waterside well, and then the stage was given a more thorough testing as Northern Ballet performed David Nixon’s version of Swan Lake.

Most companies stay more or less true to the original, but some choreographers have used the basic idea, but changed the settings and the relationships in the work — most notably Matthew Bourne with his cast of male swans, and the extraordinary Guangdong company from China who gave us an Odette balanced on pointe on her partner’s head, surrounded by a cast of acrobats.

Nixon belongs to the second group, though there’s no circus exuberance here. He has set his work in the year 1912, though we start with a flashback in which Anthony (Nixon’s Siegfried character) loses his brother in a swimming accident for which in some way he feels responsible. Right from the start, therefore, this is a work about guilt — Anthony’s guilt over his lost brother, his guilty feelings over his suppressed love for his friend Simon, which becomes obvious after an all-male swimming session (pictured), his guilt at not being able to respond sexually to his fiancée Odilia, whose costume reminds him of Odette, the swan-woman he has fallen for at the lakeside. And it’s in the lake that he ends his short life — unable to live with his tortured feelings, but also unable to live beneath the waves where he searches for his lost love.

Northern Ballet is, of course, one of this country’s finest companies, and all this unfolds through some lovely dancing and expressive acting. Nixon is also a terrific costume designer, and his swan costumes, like his swan choreography, are very beautiful, and beautifully lit by Peter Mumford. His exotic costumes for the women at Anthony’s birthday party are also quite something!

The story itself is slightly unsatisfactory here and there, and without a von Rothbart figure we never know how or why Odette has come to be in this condition, or even what exactly she is. Martha Leebolt dances well as Odette, but might like to think about restrainig her relentless smile a little.

Georgina May is touching as the rejected, hopelessly-in-love Odilia, and Kenneth Tindall and John Hull make a fine pair as Anthony and Simon, and in their duets are given some of David Nixon’s most satisfying dancing. Unseen in the Waterside’s deep pit, Northern Ballet Sinfonia put a fresh spring into Tchaikovsky’s well-known score.

Until Saturday. Box office: 0844 8717607 (www.ambassadortickets.com/aylesbury).