American Ballet Theatre’s “Sleeping Beauty” Monday night was as much a matter of what wasn’t there as what was. The company brought back this production, which received its world premiere a year ago, minus much of the gadgetry and the notional accretions around which it had originally been built. On Monday, this “Beauty,” directed by Kevin McKenzie, Gelsey Kirkland, and Michael Chernov, was a more straightforward presentation and therefore a stronger one.

But what really is the true “Sleeping Beauty”? In a way, we didn’t find out until 1999, when St. Petersburg’s Kirov Ballet brought to the stage of the Mariinsky Theatre a restoration that attempted to bring “Beauty” back to the way it had looked at its premiere on that same stage in 1890. The company worked from choreographic notations made around a decade after the production’s premiere. The notation was incomplete and not everything in the notation was transferred to the stage. Nevertheless, that “Beauty” comes as close to an urtext as we’re probably ever going to see on any stage.

By contrast, ABT’s “Beauty” proceeds from the current American mandate to streamline, which is antithetical to the way the “grand ballets” of the 19th century should ideally unfold. There is only one intermission, and most of the Act 2 hunting party dances and Act 3 wedding divertissements are gone. They are all missed. One more intermission and a considerable amount more of “Beauty” itself would serve the production and the company well. There is also too much beefed-up virtuosity for the men, the fairy cavaliers in the Prologue and the Prince’s friends in Petipa’s Act 2. And the Disney-fied décor and costumes by Tony Walton and Willa Kim are a reflection of America’s current mass-cultural propensities, and ABT’s need to appeal to that culture. Sometimes they’re pleasant enough to see.

On Monday night, ABT did everything it could to make the performance a success. Whatever tension the company felt as it made its bid for a reappraisal of its “Beauty” transmitted itself as welcome theatrical urgency and belief in the story. Led by Ormsby Wilkins, the orchestra helped, too; despite the fact that there were a number of bloopers in the playing, this didn’t rankle as it usually does because the Tchaikovsky score came alive persuasively and propulsively.

Among the performers onstage, the best work was done by the most esoterically imagined participants in the fairy tale, beginning with the five Prologue fairies, danced by Melanie Hamrick, Yuriko Kajiya, Sarah Lane, Zhong-Jing Fang, and Misty Copeland.

Each woman was different, as of course she is meant to be, and each danced beautifully with scrupulous attention to the text of her variation. Fortunately, Marius Petipa’s original choreography has been pretty much left alone here. The production keeps these fairies in circulation throughout the performance; they return to dance what is customarily the Jewels divertissement in the wedding scene, led now by the Lilac Fairy. As danced by this cast, one wanted to see these fairies as much as possible.

At the production premiere last year in New York, Veronika Part was the teenage heroine Aurora. Ms. Part performed her valiantly and impressively, and I’d like to see her do it again. But on Monday she reclaimed her rightful role as the Lilac Fairy, for which she’s perfect and in which she has lengthy experience. (Back when she was with the Kirov, she was Lilac on the opening night of the 1999 restoration.) On Monday night Ms. Part danced and declaimed magnificently. As exciting as the sweep and aplomb of her movement were the many shades of character she brought to the role, appropriate for a deity who should ideally encompass all the attributes that are presented to the infant Aurora in the Prologue by Lilac’s attendant fairies. In the Bluebird pas de deux of the last act, Maria Riccetto and Sasha Radetsky were distinctive and even imaginatively interesting interpreters of these often perfunctorily presented roles.

Paloma Herrera as Aurora faced the challenge of living up to her triumphant assumption of the role last year, when Aurora coaxed from her one of her finest and most conscientious performances. Last year, she was able to execute every technical challenge while keeping her arms and deportment gracious and her attack muted. On Monday night her blueprint was fine and her intentions always honorable, but she was a little on the dour and shaky side.

As Prince Désiré, Angel Corella was a strong and vital presence but not always a logically coherent one. His dancing was vigorous as well as somewhat smoother than his Désiré last year, but his acting less consistent. Both as actor and dancer, he did too much gear-shifting on Monday night and the effect was at times disconcerting.