Back in the 1850s one of my predecessors told Times readers that Verdi’s scandalous new La traviata was full of “foul and hideous horrors”. He probably meant prostitutes.

David McVicar is more astute. His engrossing new Scottish Opera production opens, perversely, with curtains closing: funeral drapes enveloping a room already in dustsheets. Then the entire opera is played on a giant, cracked tombstone bearing the name of Violetta Valery – la traviata herself.

The implication is as clear as Verdi’s preecho of Violetta’s deathbed music in his prelude. This is an opera not about tarts with hearts, or hypocritical men, or the shallow hedonism of the Parisian demimonde, though all of that colours the tragedy. It’s about a life-loving woman who knows that she is under the death sentence of tuberculosis.

This is the true “foul and hideous horror”. And here it is hammered home in a staging of dark beauty and cinematic fluidity, where translucent screens and constantly reconfigured drapes evoke both the claustrophobic pall of Violetta’s sickroom and the gaiety of life outside.

In Carmen Giannattasio’s highly wrought characterisation, too, the symptoms of Violetta’s consumption – blood-splattering coughs, faltering gait, hollowed eyes – seem as authentic as the candlesticks and grand piano of Tanya McCallin’s fastidious 19th-century set. So do Giannattasio’s histrionic bouts of helpless rage or fleeting ecstasy as she rails against the injustice of her illness and the emptiness of her existence.

It’s quite a performance. In one cabaletta she shreds a bunch of roses, flings wine to the floor and hurls cutlery. If there had been an encore, one would have feared for the furniture.

An encore would be unlikely, however, because although Giannattasio deploys searing vocal power and melodramatic swoops it is often at the expense of intonation. That isn’t the only disappointment. Playing Alfredo as a weak-willed nonentity might work if the part is decently sung. But I can’t recall a tenor making such an insipid nonevent of these glorious tunes as Federico Lepre makes here. Why Scottish Opera imports a minor-league Italian to deliver a spineless performance like this is a mystery. You can hear more charismatic tenors outside Glasgow’s pubs any Friday night.

Add a chorus that lags behind Emmanuel Joel-Hornak’s beat, and you may surmise that Verdi’s luminous score has enjoyed more distinguished outings. At least some strongly characterised orchestral playing and Richard Zeller’s Germont offer more consistent musical virtues.

Box office: 0870 0606647

Editor's choice

• Vote for the Breakthrough Award winner
• David Tennant back as Hamlet after back surgery
• Matt Smith is the new Dr Who