The apparent fragility of the Japanese shoji house central to this Joachim Herz production for Welsh National Opera could not have been more deceptive. After 29 years, it's going strong. The translucent washi paper of the doors and sliding screens is still a potent metaphor for the character of Cio Cio San, seemingly as vulnerable as the butterfly for whom she is named, but showing a resilience and determination beyond her 15 years. But she is blind to the essential callowness of Lieutenant Pinkerton, who takes his geisha bride in Nagasaki much as he must have taken prostitutes in other ports of call, and drinks to the day he will marry an American wife. The clash of cultures and of ideals still manages to be shocking and Puccini's weaving of the Star-Spangled Banner into the score chilling in its irony.

Amanda Roocroft brought a heart-rending quality to the title role. The voice had a lustrous glow in the middle register but effortlessly floated high and free so as to embody innocence and hope. Yet this Butterfly is so obsessed as to be impervious to the counsel of others. Perhaps most impressive here was Roocroft's containment of her emotions, so that the moments of realisation of Pinkerton's betrayal then carried a lacerating pain. The sense of her death, bringing ultimate release from that pain and from overburdening fate, was never stronger.

Claire Bradshaw's expressively sung Suzuki matched Roocroft in intensity, while the Sharpless of Eddie Wade, standing in for a virus-stricken Neal Davies, had compassion. At the end, Paul Charles Clarke almost persuaded us that Pinkerton would be traumatised for life, while conductor Julian Smith's delivery of the final dissonant chord underlined Puccini's implication that the tragedy did not end there.

· In rep until March 3. Box office: 0870 040 2000. Then touring.