After the intellectual ferocity and symbolist extravagance of Das Rheingold, Tim Albery's production of The Ring plunges towards contemporary hell in Die Walküre, relocating Wagner's great examination of transgressive love to a modern urban present, where the corrupt gods walk disguised among the humanity they have created and degraded. Wotan and Fricka play out the endgame of their marriage in a squalid hotel room. Siegmund flees from gangland violence and takes refuge in the tenement where Sieglinde lives in grinding poverty, trapped in her abusive relationship with Hunding. Purists might blench, but Albery's imagery teases out the work's ideological and emotional complexities with tremendous clarity.

The dominant performance is Jan Kyhle's Siegmund, charismatic and handsome, forcefully asserting human dignity in the face of brutality, and expressing his desire for Marie Plette's rapturous, guilty Sieglinde with singing of glorious erotic lyricism. Matthew Best's Wotan comes into his own here after a shaky start in Rheingold, exuding restrained, tragic dignity, his voice poised and beautiful. As Brünnhilde, Elizabeth Byrne faces him with passionate stroppiness. Anne Mason, meanwhile, is one of the great Frickas of our time: the change from the sympathetic figure of Rheingold into the rigid, moralistic creature we find here is both logical and deeply shocking. Conductor Richard Armstrong favours expansive speeds, which leads to a leaden start to act two but pays off elsewhere, above all in the love scenes, where the music surges and throbs with overwhelming abandon.

· Further performance on August 26. Box office: 0131-473 2000.