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The Spectator - 4th September 1999 - "A Gallic Glyndebourne" - David Fingleton

David Fingleton attends a performance of Figaro on the French Riviera

The Villa Ephrussi at St Jean Cap Ferrat was built by the Rothschilds at the turn of the century and was later left, with its superb gardens and magnificent collections of paintings and porcelain, to the French state by Baroness Beatrice de Rothschild. It functions now as a popular museum on the Côte d'Azur, and in 1997 was used for the first time by the recently established Les Azuriales Opera Festival under the enterprising and energetic direction of Sarah Holford, an English barrister who has a family villa in the area.

This summer the third such festival has just taken place with performances of Mozart's Le Nozze de Figaro, a double bill of Poulenc's La Voix Humaine and Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana, and a Verdi gala, given in the round in the villa's grandiose patio in the Etruscan style, with dinner served outdoors afterwards in the magnificent formal gardens adorned with topiary and statues. The company used is Diva Opera, an enterprising young British group under the music directorship of Bryan Evans, who accompanies the singers at the piano in fully staged productions of the operas.

With ticket prices at 600 francs and dinner prepared by Mister Brian, currently Monte Carlo's 'in' caterer, costing 450 francs, the audience is predictably well heeled, though not obliged to wear evening dress, and is also predominantly British, thanks presumably to the 'networking' of the organisers. The atmosphere is thus rather that of a Gallic Glyndebourne or Garsington, though with a slightly more ad hoc atmosphere than is found at those two highly organised institutions. Still, the ambience in this glorious setting, on a warm Riviera evening with champagne served on the terrace before the opera and during the interval, and dinner afterwards in the garden. with performers joining guests at the tables, is distinctly cordial.

Diva Opera was set up as a rival to Pavilion Opera, where Bryan Evans was previously music director, and works along similar lines. though with rather more established and experienced singers. The audience sits around the four sides of a playing area about 25 foot square, in close proximity to the singers, with the pianist at the top end. Though there is no scenery as such, the cast are fully costumed and there are all the appropriate props and furniture. Indeed, in this staging of Figaro by Justin Way, there was altogether too much furniture, especially, in the first act, where such vital aspects of the action as Cherubino's hiding in the armchair were obscured by the proximity of other pieces of furniture. plus steps and a clothes-line. Even though the singers were obstructed by such effects they managed to perform with some dash. and as the opera progressed the furniture and business diminished and involvement intensified, though the final 'garden' act was hampered by being overlit, with the singers too close to the audience for their disguises to convince.

But, overall, admirably accompanied by Evans, this was an assured production with confident singing and incisive acting. Stars of the show were Figaro and Susanna, admirably taken by Timothy Dawkins and Giselle Minns, two young singers with splendid voices who exuded dramatic confidence. Young mezzo-soprano Jeanette Ager, though lacking stage experience, revealed considerable vocal promise as Cherubino, and there was strong singing from Riccardo Simonetti's Count and Dominique Thiebaud's slightly stolid Countess. The performance clearly involved its audience - there were more laughs than one usually hears in a bigger house - and tension seldom flagged.

It may not be ideal to perform opera with just a solo piano, but with singing and acting at this level there was no doubt of the audience's satisfaction. Les Azuriales, with its energetic organisation and fund-raising, has clearly come to stay on the Côte d'Azur, and with plans to extend to the old convent at Cimiez, above Nice, as well as to continue at Villa Ephrussi, and to perform Verdi's La Traviata and Bizet's Djamileh, I much look forward to next summer's season.

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