An intriguing take on Nabucco reveals much about the pursuit of power, finds Conrad Wilson.

Verdi's Nabucco, with its big, vibrant choruses, was the work with which Welsh National Opera rose to fame in 1952 on a wave of local fervour. Scottish Opera, a decade later, took a different, more dangerous path, leading to Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande and Verdi's Otello, with the result that a Nabucco from our resident company now seems the remotest of possibilities. In any case, having been forced to disband its chorus, it would need to hire an army of part-time voices in order to stage Verdi's youthful masterpiece.

For Edinburgh Grand Opera, however, this is hardly a problem. Like other big amateur companies, it has choristers in plenty. Having bravely staged Menotti's Saint of Bleecker Street last year, it wanted a sure-fire success with which to employ them this year; Nabucco was the answer.

Yet it was not the intention of Rita Henderson, the Edinburgh-based director, that it would be just any old Nabucco, involving grease-painted Babylonians and their Jewish captives. Wanting to display Verdi's dramatic flexibility, and shunning conventional symbolism, she has placed her anti-hero in the 1940s, transforming him into a Citizen Kane-style newspaper tycoon who prints "what he wants the populace to believe".

It's an intriguing notion, which addresses Verdi's depiction of Nebuchadnezzar as an outsize personality. The question, as usual, is whether it will work. Henderson, whose background is spoken drama more than opera, has high hopes. Having successfully staged the company's Saint of Bleecker Street, whose only drawback was Menotti's music, she is eager to progress to something in which music is paramount but which is not an ornate costume drama.

Yet, unlike the tiresome wave of modern directors whose primary aim is to obscure an opera's story, she is anxious to show that the art of updating should lie above all in clarity. As she puts it: "I wanted to get to the heart of Nabucco, what it's about, what's important to get across." The work fascinates her as a battle for supremacy between pairs of people - Nabucco and Zaccaria, Abigaille and Fenena - and the way they may employ power, influence, deception, religion and a desire to inflict pain to get what they want. A very modern story, in other words.

In traditional productions of Nabucco, she points out, people favour the splendour of the piece, but other ways of engaging with it are now needed. Her own way will avoid being too specific: "It won't quite represent the here and now. It won't quite be positioned in a definite place - it's going to be more ambiguous. The decor will employ a series of gauzes. There will be no computers or mobiles, no references to Iraq or Iran. What happens in it is what is happening constantly all over the world. Hate, greed and the religion of money are things that never change."

As a newspaper magnate, Nabucco the man will come into new focus - or so Henderson hopes. The danger, as always, is that the opera itself will end up overthrowing the concept. Will the music of Va Pensiero, the most famous passage in the score and known everywhere as the chorus of Hebrew slaves, resist so radical a change? Henderson thinks not, and speaks of people with suitcases, their possessions in a single bag. What's radical in that? Even if, at worst, the effect is no more than that of a malfunctioning airport, the chorus, she says, will consist of individuals, not just choristers.

The Edinburgh Grand has staged Nabucco before. This time, with the support of Richard Lewis, its open-minded young conductor (and, says Henderson, "an important factor"), the company sees the need to do things differently.

Yet each production in its own way has proved its worth. Indeed, one of the earliest, in the 1950s, was positively revolutionary. Conducted at the Usher Hall by the young Alexander Gibson, at that time still in charge of what later became English National Opera, the performance brought a raw, fierce Italian passion to the music - as well as some full-size singers, including David Ward as Zaccaria - thereby paving the way for the founding of Scottish Opera a few years later.

The need for a topping of professionals is something the Edinburgh Grand continues to recognise. This year Christina Dunwoodie and Janet de Vigne will alternate in the role of the treacherous Abigaille - whose dramatic range encompasses leaps of up to two octaves, whose voice must possess plenty of theatrical contrast, and who brings the stage to powerful life whenever she appears. That the stage this time is that of Edinburgh Festival Theatre - which Henderson sees as "a marvellous luxury, one of the few spaces in Europe where a hundred choristers could be lost" - seems all the better.

Verdi's Nabucco is at the Edinburgh Festival Theatre from tonight until Saturday.