Any production of La Traviata pivots about its Violetta, and when the young French singer Alexia Cousin, who was to sing the role on the first night in Welsh National Opera's new staging, had to withdraw with bronchitis, the company could have been in a mess. Luckily, Nuccia Focile was around to take over. Focile was due to sing the role later in WNO's summer tour, so could step in after one rehearsal. In the process, she saved the production, for without her blazing commitment, determination to wring every morsel of emotion out of the vocal lines and credibility as the doomed woman, this would be a wretched affair.

It's hard to think of another Traviata that has offered so few insights. In their updating of the piece to the present day, directors Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser make a nonsense of many of the 19th-century mores and social distinctions on which the plot is founded, while designer Christian Fenouillat conjures garish interiors, garden-centre furniture for the second act, and the inevitable hospital trolley and saline drip for the death scene.

What is there is banal or mystifying. Why is Violetta's apartment adorned with larger-than-life pictures of the women herself? Why are a cello and a grand piano without pedals on display in the second act - do Violetta and Alfredo spend the evenings playing chamber musicin their rural idyll? More importantly, why is no relationship properly defined?

Tugan Sokhiev's conducting comes and goes, and the singers keep up when they can. Peter Wedd's Alfredo begins unpromisingly but gradually gains in confidence if not in lustrous tone. Christopher Purves has a presence as Germont, though there was some instability in the tuning and a few unfocused phrases. That can be tidied up, though the production, bar Focile's compelling performance, is beyond saving.

· Friday May 21 and Tuesday May 25 (box office: 029-2087 8889), then touring.