La Bohème is an opera most of us think we know backwards - but it is often misunderstood. For many, it is a sentimental depiction of a doomed love affair set in a romanticised 19th-century Paris. But Puccini's intentions were different: this is a study of the vagaries of sex and love among a group of characters outside bourgeois society. His bohemians live in grinding poverty in what is, ultimately, the amoral, tawdry Paris of Zola.

Phyllida Lloyd's production for Opera North, first seen in 1993 and now revived by Kate Saxon, forcefully desentimentalises the work, setting it in a faceless metropolis that could just as well be London, New York, or pre-unification west Berlin.

The squalor is horrible - the four men live in a dank concrete studio, plagued by a coin-devouring electricity meter. Lloyd and Saxon explore the emotional and sexual freedom that counters this grimness with great tenderness, though the results are not for purists. Schaunard is a drag queen and Musetta a chanteuse in a bisexual brothel as well as the muse for the besotted Marcello's Warhol-style paintings. We are forcefully reminded of the opera's concentrated time scheme. The affair between Rodolfo and Mimi, begun casually on Christmas Eve, reaches its crisis point while the seasonal baubles are chucked out. Relationships in this world are brief but shattering.

There are minor flaws. Peter Auty's nerdily touching Rodolfo takes a while to settle. Barbara Haveman, exquisitely fragile as Mimi, is occasionally effortful. Giselle Allen hasn't quite got the vocal allure for Musetta, though Mark Stone is as sexy a Marcello as one could wish for. In the pit, Dietfried Bernet swerves between searing lyricism and a rough-edged expressionism that perfectly matches the tone of the production. The whole transcends its imperfections - and it is very highly recommended.

· At the Grand Theatre, Leeds (0113-222 6222), until Wednesday, then touring to Newcastle, Salford, Nottingham, Hull and Sheffield.