Mozart was a composer whom Balanchine revered but choreographed to very rarely. On Friday night, New York City Ballet celebrated Mozart’s 250th birthday by reviving Balanchine’s “Divertimento No. 15,” one of the few pieces the company’s founder set to Mozart’s music.

This masterpiece is additionally intriguing because it is to some degree an after-image of “Caracole,” an earlier ballet by Balanchine to the same Mozart score. “Caracole” was a widely admired but short-lived item in the company’s repertory. Only four years after its 1952 premiere, the company had forgotten it, and Balanchine created new choreography. Nevertheless, we see in “Divertimento No. 15” that Balanchine reprised some moments that are preserved in performance photos of “Caracole.” Both ballets featured five ballerinas and three cavaliers, as well as a small corps de ballet that is given its own musical movement.

“Divertimento No. 15” demands a particular set of performance manners that are ebullient without being overemphatic. Mozart’s surging melodies are echoed by a singing line to arms and torso that remains unbroken, even when Balanchine’s phrases are dotted and dashed by juxtapositions of sharp, then soft, movements.

In the Theme and Variations section of “Divertimento,” each of the leads dances a solo. In the Andante, there is an impersonal, change-partners-and-dance feel that is quintessentially Balanchine; sexual asymmetry between the lead roles means the men partner different women in turn. Each duet that makes up the Andante feels tender and gracious, but there is no chance for the audience to extrapolate a protracted romantic entanglement.

For Friday night’s “Divertimento,”the ballerinas were Yvonne Borree, Megan Fairchild, Sterling Hyltin, Abi Stafford, and Miranda Weese, partnered by three of NCYB’s most distinguished men: Jason Fowler, Philip Neal, and Jonathan Stafford. All of them performed as if aware of the importance of this date in theatrical history.

Each did justice to his or her intricately accented solos. Ms. Fairchild made a special effort to lend a surging melodic arch to her arms, and her temperament lent itself to the puckish flavor of arms that flipped open, then rested coquettishly on her hips. There was an expansive breadth to her torso and spring to her prancing emboites.

Ms. Borree, meanwhile, made playful drama out of shifts in her steps. She successfully emphasized the contrasts between small and big as well as the instantaneous transitions from contained to impetuously released.

The Andante gave some of the cast members trouble, however: Ms. Hilton pushed her arabesque penchee a little too hard, and Ms. Stafford was punchier than she needed to be. Ms. Borree’s duet with Mr. Neal was marred by what seemed like her anxiety about a supported promenade and developpe.

Ms. Weese is the tallest of Friday night’s female principals, but she dominated the proceedings with more than her height. Her main contribution was a certain gravitas: In the universe of Mozartean opera, she would be the countess to her sister colleagues’ Susannas and Cherubinos. In her solo, she kept her cool and stayed on top of the incredibly fast steps she performed in almost perfect synchronicity with guest conductor Clotilde Otranto. (Music Director Andrea Quinn is leaving NYCB later this year, and a number of distinguished guests are appearing at NYCB’s podium this season.) Ms. Weese’s bourrees back and forth across the stage possessed a winged fleetness; in the An dante, she danced with just a tinge of poignant farewell.

In “Divertimento,” Balanchine has a great deal of fun toying with the vocabulary of the social dances of aristocratic courts that were still unchallenged during most of Mozart’s lifetime. NYCB’s dancers extend a leg with tongue-in-cheek haughtiness, then immediately retract it,as if someone had blurted out a remark and then instantly insisted, “I didn’t say that!” Foot drags and taps freely relate to the natterings of tap dance, which Balanchine also appropriated for his vocabulary.

But watching “Divertimento No. 15” feels somehow incomplete without the repertory inclusion of Balanchine’s “Symphonie Concertante,” in which spectacular roles for two ballerinas echoed Mozart’s violin and viola leads. Created for students of the School of American Ballet in 1945, “Symphonie Concertante” was then performed by NYCB professionals for several years before vanishing for decades.American Ballet Theatre revived it from a notation score in 1983 but last performed it more than a decade ago; NYCB took it back into its repertory for a few performances again led by SAB students in 1993.

Today, “Symphonie Concertante” is not performed anywhere.The active presence of “Divertimento No. 15” in NYCB’s repertory serves to underscore the lacunae left by the absence of another rare collaboration between Mozart and Balanchine. There are parallels as well as striking divergences between “Divertimento No. 15” and “Symphonie Concertante,” and both are essential works in the Balanchine canon.