Rigoletto, Grand Theatre, Leeds <!-- none onestar twostar threestar fourstar fivestar -->

As the Grand Theatre Leeds re-opens after major work to turn the Victorian complex into a state-of-the-art opera centre, only part of the £32m investment by the city, the lottery and Yorkshire Bank is evident. The municipal foyers and scruffy façade remain, although drastic cosmetic surgery is promised. But the first phase has produced new rehearsal rooms, a scissor-lift and a flying system that can strike almost a whole set at the push of a button.

The auditorium boasts bigger, cushier seats (though not sufficiently offset to have solved the notorious sightline problems) and subtle air-conditioning. More importantly, as Martin André raised his baton at the start of Verdi's Rigoletto, it became obvious that the acoustic is more immediate, the sound warmer and less cramped. What wasn't so obvious was what was going on in Charles Edwards's patchy production, which he conceived, directed, designed and lit.

Shades of Fellini's La Dolce Vita suggested a 1960s docu-soap. The "office" in the mansion of a mafioso-style "Il Duca" is peopled by shallow, shabby men whose lives, like that of their boss, revolve around deceit, corruption and cheap thrills. Rigoletto has the menial task of office dogsbody; Monterone (a sonorous Stephen Richardson) is tortured to a bloody death, his daughter introduced as a possible victim of drug-rape.

The gritty realism extends to urban as well as moral decay. Rigoletto keeps his daughter Gilda closeted away in a dingy caravan in the grounds of the building, close to a barbed-wire perimeter within which the assassin Sparafucile (a punk street beggar, well sung by Brindley Sherratt) and his prostitute sister Maddalena squat in a decrepit van.

A compelling Rigoletto, Alan Opie displays his gift for dramatic characterisation, and his secure upper register makes Rafael Rojas's blaring Duke all the less convincing. Henriette Bonde-Hansen shows flashes of character as Gilda, the orchestra grows in intensity and the chorus displays Verdian punchiness.

But the evening lacks any real frisson: Edwards's intentions, however imaginative, simply aren't carried through. The Yorkshire top brass, who turned out in droves, must have been dismayed by the drabness of the evening.

In rep to 6 December (08701 251 898; www.operanorth.co.uk)