You might think that David McVicar, one of the most sought-after opera directors, would be wary of working with Scottish Opera, a company that has had its fair share of troubles in recent years, that has lost its permanent chorus, and still faces an uncertain future. Here, after all, is a man with a fierce reputation for demanding the highest of standards, who makes no secret of his contempt for poor work, who turned down the Metropolitan Opera because it would not accept his design ideas.

You might think wrong. As he prepares for next week's opening of the first new production of La Traviata that the company has done for 20 years, he is full of praise for what he has found.

“I'm actually enjoying it more than any other time I've worked here,” he says. “It's a much leaner, meaner company now. Yes, they're definitely under-resourced, but there's a refreshing enthusiasm which did not exist before, maybe because they're battling for survival, and maybe because they've been to hell and back, and they have survived.”

So has the loss of its permanent chorus damaged the company? He hesitates, not because he thinks it has, but because he does not want to offend those who have lost their jobs.

“The truth is that there are some advantages to hiring a chorus on a seasonal basis because you keep replenishing your stock, it stays fresher. Attendance has been exemplary and that was not always the case when the chorus were assured of their jobs. They really want to be on stage, they want to come to rehearsals. They're interested in what is going on.”

Being back in Glasgow, for McVicar, a native Glaswegian, is not so much a case of being at home, as working in a place he finds conducive, and that too is a huge advantage. He is not easy to please, and this is his first Traviata, a piece which five years ago he proclaimed he loathed, saying that he had a real problem with Verdi's women. “I could never do such a coarse, clumsy reduction of this woman.”

Now, however, he has had time to reflect, and his views have changed, not least because he thinks that this story of a courtesan who falls in love, but who is warned to give up her man because respectable society won't stand for it, is such a strong one. “The first thing I wanted to do was to finally understand the story. One of my beefs about Traviata is that usually when you go to see some big production in America, the curtain goes up and there's a big fashion parade. I'm certain most of the audience are unaware what the story is about, what this woman does for a living, and I wanted to really address that,” he says.

“I wanted a Traviata where we paid scrupulous attention to the particular society that she is a part of, which is the demi-monde, to make it really clear what the tragedy is, why this woman suffers the way she does, to knock some of the grandeur off it.”

The famous party scene in Act One is usually played with elaborate costumes and in grand surroundings. It enrages him. “You know I always have a seizure in Act One when on comes the ladies' chorus, wearing tiaras and everyone's behaving very well.” In fact, he says, Violetta, the heroine, is “in a really filthy temper because she's being importuned by particularly boring clients, who want to stay the night, so she's trying to find a reason to show them the door ... she swears like a trooper, plays the piano badly, orders the dinner in from the café downstairs, they stay up until five in the morning and she gets drunk”.

Interviewed on Desert island Discs recently, McVicar said that he had a real problem with “authority”. Yet surely being an opera director is one of the most authoritarian jobs in all the arts?

He acknowledges the conflict. “I always had a real problem with being told what to do and being told what to think,” he says. “I grew up during the Thatcher years and I hated that. I suppose that's a very Scottish kind of attitude, but she was royally loathed.” But when it comes to directing opera he insists on having his way. “I am an authoritarian figure and I do frighten people,” he tells me. “I don't bark, I don't shout, but I know I can scare people I'm not saying I use that as a tool but I know people are nervous.”

He adds: “Singers aren't nervous of me, maybe because I'm so goddamn confident. The rehearsal room is a safe place for the cast, where everyone's important, it's how you build a good relationship with the chorus, you make them know you value their contribution to the show, I'm quite socialist about that.

“I think it's OK to lay down the law if you really understand the art form you're dealing with. Singers are really grateful if they're working with a director who understands the art form.”

Modesty is not a quality which troubles him. “I'm formidably literate in the form, which is why I'm no longer worried about being an opera director, I was about eight years ago, but now I feel comfortable with this label.”

When Traviata opens the audience will find a story set firmly in the 19th century. Was he tempted to take this story of hypocrisy and double standards and set it in the modern era?

“No, it doesn't work in the modern era because we don't have a demi-monde in the same way, and we certainly don't have courtesans in the same way. We have another kind of thing, we have Ivana Trump now - she's way trashier than Violetta. The whole point of the demi-monde is that it was a parallel night-time society, which wealthy respectable men could dip their toes into, once their wives were tucked up in bed. When you go to the altar you make sure your wife is a virgin, meanwhile where do you get your sexual experiences from? You get it from the demi-monde. What do you do while your wife is producing the heirs? You go to the demi-monde. And you don't tip your hat to these ladies if your wife is with you.”

All this would suggest that this is going to be a sexually charged production, but McVicar denies that. “Actually, it's a curiously sexless piece, it's a romantic piece. Verdi, I'm sorry to say was never very good at erotic charge, though he's great at romance. Puccini is the master of the orgasmic thrust, but he was operating later, less censorship. There's no orgasm here. But there's lots and lots of romance.

“With Violetta, she is a courtesan, it's a classic situation that lots of courtesans find themselves in, because you must be a really cold bitch not to want to fall in love and not to be turned on by a handsome young man who turns up in your opera box, and you say, ‘Actually I don't want to sleep with a 90-year-old, I want to sleep with a 20-year-old stud', which is what happens to Violetta.”

So this is a sexless story, which just happens to have sex as a theme running through it. In the end, however, what matters to McVicar above all is that he manages to explain the story to his audience and to kindle the passion for opera that drives him.

“I really think that as a director I have a responsibility to the people in that audience who have never seen Traviata before. I owe it to them that they understand the story. It may be coloured by my interpretation but the story has got to be clear.”

He believes that Scottish Opera has as much, if not more potential for doing that than any of the world's major opera companies, even La Scala.

“Can I share a secret with you?” he asks. “La Scala does not do top-notch. You may see the most expensive singers in the world, but actually that performance has been turned around in three days, whereas a Scottish Opera performance is done with time spent on it, with commitment and intelligence and company spirit.

“Everyone is driving towards the product, everyone wants the company to survive and achieve, so there's real energy. I'm very happy to be here.”

La Traviata opens at the Theatre Royal, Glasgow, on October 30, and tours to Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Inverness before transferring to the Grand Opera House, Belfast, early in 2009.

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