In some productions of “Swan Lake,” the mood gathers ominously like a storm. In American Ballet Theatre’s version, which opened on Friday, Kevin McKenzie’s staging manufactures pathos in the pressurized swell of a wave pool. He condenses the 19th century original to fit our modern attention span. Recently edited down further for PBS’s “Dance in America” series, this made-for-TV version nonetheless boasts real MGM grandeur in the theater.

The production favors clarity over spectacle. It adopts a storybook directness, curtailing many of the pure dance divertissements and pantomimic episodes. Divided by a single intermission, each act alternates evenly between the cursed kingdom of the swan queen and the festive court of a young prince who vows to release the girls from von Rothbart’s spell. There is no jester dance or tutor’s comic sequence in the opening birthday party, while the character of Benno plays a more prominent role in the action’s transition to the forest glade.

The well-rehearsed corps struck tantalizing symmetries on opening night, leaving visible ripples in their wake and framing the pas d’action of the principal dancers. Unfortunately, the leading cast was frustratingly lopsided. As Odile, Gillian Murphy continued to polish her role, softening her technical mastery with an increased lyricism in her arms. As Odette, she brought an intoxicating astringency to her movements. But Jose Manuel Carreno delivered a rum performance as Prince Siegfried, merely dutiful in his partnering, straining in his variations, and flat in his characterization.

As Benno, Herman Cornejo hovered colossally in the air during his solo in the pas de trois with Xiomara Reyes and Yuriko Kajiya. With her trademark animation, Ms. Reyes seemed to tease alive the floral patterns on her dress. Ms. Kajiya, slightly unyielding at first, eventually relaxed, lunging dreamily in a diagonal before retracing her steps with zesty chaine turns.

Zack Brown’s second-empire design solemnized the proceedings in the Great Hall.

The national envoys from Hungary, Spain, Italy, and Poland each made their entrance down a gilded staircase to dance beneath candelabra, wearing costumes of lush satiny fabric. Carlos Lopez and Craig Salstein in particular thrilled as the Neopolitan dancers. In a trumpeting tarantella they competed back and forth with multiple pirouettes. Ribbons flying in their hair, they joined arms in brotherly battements.

The high point, however, belonged to Marcelo Gomes as the debonair manifestation of von Rothbart (Isaac Stappas played the amphibious other half). Terrible in his good looks, the mysterious nobleman tossed his cape over his arm as if to tame or provoke the four princesses. He guided their limbs skillfully like a puppeteer, and then magnetically lured all of them together around his arms for a tight round dance. As he let go, each princess deflated in her large gown onto the floor. His theatricality, combined with a musical sixth sense, had a bewitching effect on the entire audience.

In a bold final gambit, Mr. Gomes seizes Prince Siegfried’s throne beside the Queen Mother (Georgina Parkinson). The gesture, invented for this production, exemplifies the unexpected parallels that exist between the two men. Many of von Rothbart’s movements echo Prince Siegfried’s own, in particular the slow turn in attitude which begins the prince’s introspective dance at the end of his birthday celebration. Realizing his salad days are numbered, he stirs lambently to Tchaikovsky’s “Andante sostenuto,” describing a circumference in a series of lingering, ambivalent pirouettes and turns a la seconde. The aristocratic ladies slowly lower their arms as the prince approaches, their dresses fanning as they lean in arabesque.

This leitmotif follows others, the ensnaring gesture with the back of the arms, for example, when Siegfried first captures Odile and von Rothbart negotiates his attention among the several ladies. In this way, Mr. Gomes becomes a kind of nemesis, devastatingly handsome, who no sooner seduces young maidens than he transforms them. Just as Odette serves as the counterpart to Odile, so the prince can be read as the sympathetic side of the black magician.

Their association is heightened with the brisk pacing of the story, laying further emphasis on the theme of shape-shifting and transformation already present in the swan queen’s curse and Prince Siegfried’s own coming-of-age. In the simplified libretto, the action retains the allure as a tragic love story. But it also delivers a riveting, often poignant, account of ballet’s most beloved allegory about good and evil – even the enchanted wilderness in between.

“Swan Lake” will be performed again July 5, 7 & 8 at 8 p.m. and July 6 & 9 at 2 p.m. & 8 p.m. (Lincoln Center, 212-362-6000).