Last autumn, Carlos Acosta retired from the Royal Opera House main stage with his new Carmen. In December, he waved goodbye to London Coliseum with A Classical Selection; then he quit the below-stairs Linbury Studio, with Will Tuckett’s Elizabeth.

This week, before returning to his birthplace to concentrate on his new contemporary company, the great Cuban is bidding what promises to be his final adieu to ballet-performing full-stop, with The Classical Farewell.

If Lt Columbo himself could barely manage so many tantalising exits, one can hardly grudge the great Cuban for wanting to protract his departure from both ballet and Britain so extensively. Ever since joining the Royal Ballet in 1998, he has been such a magnificent force for the good, given so many ballet-goers so much pleasure, garnered such an ocean of admirers, that a simple wave of the hand would have felt woefully inadequate.

Overlapping largely, though by no means entirely, with last year’s Coliseum bill, The Classical Farewell sees him, as ever, team up with some of his chums from the Royal Ballet and elsewhere, he and they delivering a semi-staged potpourri of passages from great 19th- and 20th-century ballets, with a few lesser-known pieces thrown in for good measure.