The Paris Opera Ballet is a magnificent institution. I don’t mean to be Panglossian; there’s as much malice and misery there as anywhere else, but the POB is a tribute to government funding for the arts. Its productions are sumptuous and its working conditions comfortable. Although POB solicits corporate and private donations (the company, in fact, is tied at the hip with Parisian society), Elysée Palace signs off on most of its operating expenses. A school whose pedigree dates back to Louis XIV supplies the company with distinguished new possibilities every year. The dancers are well paid and pensioned upon retirement.

The POB hasn’t performed here in 10 years, but a reacquaintance with the company is available to New Yorkers on Wednesday night, when PBS telecasts a performance of Balanchine’s evening-length “Jewels” that the POB has just released on DVD.

The POB first performed Balanchine’s 1967 work in 1999, and this performance was taped in 2005. The POB dancers have beautifully sculpted bodies, panache, stylistic subtlety, silkily assured technique; what one might call their “grand horizontal” temperament does not, on the whole, prevent them generating the speed and attack necessary for Balanchine ballets.

“Jewels” is a three-act ballet, each act purportedly evoking the flavor of a different gem, as well as the dance culture of each country important to Balanchine — France, America, and Russia. The rise of the curtain on “Emeralds,” set to music by Gabriel Fauré, provides an opportunity not just to see Balanchine’s moody and romantic ballet well performed but to venture into the POB’s Kremlinology, for standing onstage is Mathieu Ganio.

The POB is rigidly hierarchical, with progress from rank to rank determined in part by annual exams for the professional performers. At age 20, in 2004, however, Mr. Ganio was hiked from the lowest rank to the highest. It was a projection of absolute power on the part of POB artistic director Brigitte Lefèvre, as well as by Hugues Gall, the then overall director of the opera house, that shocked the ballet world. At the time there was lots of talk of galloping favoritism, but the fact is that directors do these kinds of things as much to prove that they can as for any other reason. In “Emeralds,” Mr. Ganio proves to have all the classic raw material for a first rate danseur noble, but hardly justifies the kind of special treatment he’s received.

In their two duets in “Emeralds,” Mr. Ganio and Laetitia Pujol frost Balanchine’s choreography with a great deal of embracing and emoting. It’s all a bit much, and I didn’t quite believe it. Similarly, in her solo, in which the ballerina famously seems to be admiring her own bijouterie, Ms. Pujol is too pert. I’m confident, however, that as they mature, both dancers will undoubtedly register more truthfully by effusing less.

If Mr. Ganio has been promoted way too fast, Emannuel Thibault’s rise has been slow enough to raise more than a few eyebrows. Mr. Thibault dances the “Emeralds” pas de trois impeccably, nicely flanked by Eleanora Abbagnato and Nolwenn Daniel.

In the second ballerina lead, Clairemarie Osta supplies a note of maturity. She is enigmatic, evocative, and perfectly judicious in her stylistic decisions. She doesn’t put a foot wrong; she doesn’t milk or exaggerate anything. My one quibble with her performance is that a slight, but necessary note of abandon is missing — her arabesque poses, in her solo, for example, need to be less planted. As her partner, Kader Belabri is stolid, but solidly attentive. In their duet, they reach a tremendous emotional crescendo without resorting to surface emoting.

Set to Stravinsky, “Rubies,” which follows, is meant to describe the hustle and bustle of Manhattan, the rough glitter of Broadway and the pavé swank of Park Avenue during the Jazz Age. The “Rubies” cavalier is one of the greatest men’s roles ever created, encompassing everything from oaf to prince, and it’s a shame that the POB has not seen fit to recognize the full dimensions of this part. Alessio Carbone takes every possible opportunity to make eyes at the audience, dancing as if he were a chorus boy at the Lido.

The choice of Mr. Carbone may have been intended to serve as a foil to his partner, the ever-lovely Aurélie Dupont, who is rather wan and Gallically aloof here. Indeed, no one in the cast sells it like Mr. Carbone does, nor does anyone in the cast fully capture the rhythmic plangency the section requires. But Ms. Dupont is a great ballerina to whom one is able to cede some interpretative latitude; indeed, one really wants to see her do it a little bit “her” way. If Mr. Carbone is from Montparnasse, Ms. Dupont is from the Faubourg Saint-Germain. Several years ago, Ms. Dupont suffered a terrible injury that kept her offstage for months; her stamina has diminished somewhat, but she compensates with style, nuance, dry wit, and comment.

Another delicious performance is given by towering Marie-Agnès Gilot as the “Rubies” soloist, sometimes referred to as the “pinup,” who slouches, struts outrageously, and becomes entangled with four male attendants.

Agnès Letestu stars in “Diamonds,” the final segment of “Jewels.” Ms. Letestu has been a favored daughter of the POB establishment since her student days, which perhaps explains her appearance here. There is no question that Ms. Letestu is a distinguished ballerina, but she is hardly the ideal choice for “Diamonds.” She gives a very clean, assured, and, at times, glittering performance. But her stiff back prevents her from easily molding herself into many of the rapturous poses of the adagio, meant to summarize exalted encounters in the Russian Imperial ballet, and set to, of course, Tchaikovsky. Emotional depth is not the first thing one expects in POB performers, but nevertheless one notices how much of the duet’s poetry and poignancy is missing here.

Ms. Letestu is teamed here with Jean-Guillaume Bart, who is long, lean, and noble, as well as technically pristine. One of the wonderful things about the POB leading men is that they don’t insist on bringing to the stage the masculinity of the boardroom or the soccer field. They don’t exhibit the defensiveness we find in so many of the world’s male dancers. The POB cavaliers certainly are not effeminate, but they are happy to be and behave like ballet dancers whose lineage goes back to the Sun King’s epoch of frills and graces.

One of the glories of a well-funded ballet institution is that equal time is spent on the corps de ballet as well the foregrounded performers. In all three ballets, the POB corps — men as well as women — dance with exemplary taste, skill, and presence.