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The Sunday Express - 2nd September 2001 - "A Scots Star Rises on the Riviera" - David Fingleton (Review of 2001 Festival)  

At the stunning location of the Villa Rothschild just above St Jean Cap Ferrat, with its glorious central patio and statue-filled garden, a star has been rising. Alycia Fashae is a young Scottish soprano who made her mark last year when she stood in at short notice as Leila in Bizet's The Pearl Fishers for the English National Opera at the London Coliseum. Now she has impressed even more with a gloriously-sung Donna Anna in the energetic Diva Opera production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, and as Antonia in Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann, directed by crack pianist Bryan Evans.

Alycia’s performances provided two of the highlights of this year’s highly successful Opera Azuriales, launched with the permission of the French government by top London commercial barrister Sarah Holford in 1997. She decided that if the Christies could do it at Glyndebourne, why shouldn’t she do something similar, on a smaller scale, on the Cote d’Azur? Sarah formed her own company to produce the double bill of short operas by Chabrier and Donizetti at this year’s event, using for the first time a small chamber orchestra under Martin Pickard.

Don Giovanni, produced by Diva’s director of productions Wayne Morris, was clear and straightforward after the travesty of a staging that I witnessed from ENO at the Coliseum earlier this summer. Bryan Evans’s piano truly sounded like an orchestra and the cast performed with conviction and great musicianship. Alongside Alycia Fashae, the outstanding performances were by D’Arcy Bleiker, as a swaggering, rich toned Don, and Noel Mann as a saturnine Leperello.

Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann was a more ambitious undertaking, its massive form – three acts, prologue and epilogue, crowd scenes and extensive dialogue – are less suited to Diva’s small-scale treatment. Yet despite a lack of sparkle, Evans triumphed again, William Relton’s Twenties production was clear and in reasonable French, and there were some strong performances. Jeffrey Lloyd Roberts was a sonorous if stolid Hoffman, Alycia Fashae sang gorgeously as Antonia and promising young Swedish mezzo Catrin Johnsson sang and acted with great conviction as Hoffmann’s muse Nicklaus.

The double bill was equally memorable, with both works dealing with the problems of love and marriage. The newly-married young couple, Natasha Marsh and Miriam Aellig, in Chabrier’s work, sand sweetly and were deftly accompanied. Christopher Cowell’s direction was skilful and in the Donizetti opera buffa Il Campanello, brilliantly choreographed. Pickard's orchestra played with fizz and there were strong performances by Thora Ker, Andrew Slater and above all Grant Doyle, superb as the bride’s wicked cousin.

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