Richard Eyre's strong yet unobtrusive Royal Opera staging of Verdi 's La Traviata is 20 years old this year. It's been variably served since its premiere, though its current revival is among its most distinguished, its only drawback being the rather mannered conducting of Dan Ettinger, whose fondness for detail has a habit of impeding the music's natural ebb and flow.

Violetta is played by Diana Damrau, a soprano of matchless intelligence. Technically, she is perfectly at ease in a role that has sometimes been described as demanding too much of one singer. So there's both grace and sparkle in the coloratura of act one, and enough metal in the voice to manage the dramatic extremes of act three. In between, the effect of moral pressure on her relationship with Francesco Demuro's Alfredo, is expressed in breathtaking, superbly controlled lyricism.

Dramatically, she's outstanding, too. Few Violettas have realised the symptoms of consumption and their relationship to her psychological state with quite such subtle, yet unflinching veracity. Panic crosses her face every time she experiences shortness of breath. A truly disturbing moment of collapse prefaces her decision to give Alfredo up. The final scenes have a remorseless intensity that only the greatest interpreters can accomplish.

It's by no means a one-woman show. Demuro, handsome and stylish, makes a fine Alfredo, a naive charmer rather than a boyish hothead. Germont is played by Dmitri Hvorostovsky, in superb voice, though his interpretation has lost some of its former subtlety. His reaction to Anna Netrebko's Violetta in the famous revival of 2008 blended outrage with unacknowledged desire. Here, he's the altogether more conventional authoritarian paterfamilias, though his delineation of Germont's growing awareness that Violetta's moral integrity far transcends his own, is touching in the extreme.

• Until 20 May. Box office: 020-7304 4000. Venue: roh.org.uk

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