Ten months after it was unveiled by Scottish Opera, David McVicar's Traviata has travelled south. The director has recreated his production for Welsh National Opera with an entirely new cast, but with the same concern for detail that was so admired in Glasgow.

A Tissot painting reproduced on the cover of the programme suggests a gentle updating - from the midpoint of the 19th Century, when Verdi composed the score, to the last quarter. It is a world sumptuously evoked in Tanya McCallin's sets, which use Violetta's gravestone as their floor as if the whole action is seen in retrospect through Alfredo's eyes. Yet that idea isn't pushed at all; instead, McVicar's production makes its points by carefully delineating every thread in the dramatic texture, drawing out believable relationships between subsidiary characters - whether at Violetta's party in the first scene, or around her deathbed in the last.

Rating: ***