IN her student days at the University of York, Rachel Nicholls would busk outside York Minster.

On Monday, she returns to the city in English Touring Opera's production of Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte, and happy memories will be evoked.

"I used to busk with my friend Emma Gibbs, I played violin and sang soprano, she did the same, and we'd do Shepherd's Ave Maris Stella and Monteverdi's Beatus Vir and, hysterically, we used to do one of the duets from Cosi Fan Tutte, from Act Two. In the English Touring Opera production, it's the one that starts with "I'd prefer to take the blonde one'!" Rachel recalls.

She left York in 1996 and has since lost touch with Emma but now Rachel is back, and she is taking the role of the blonde one, Dorabella.

In Mozart's joyous opera, fidelity is tested, emotions are betrayed and lovers deceived when a cynical gentleman challenges two fiancs to a bet. He is convinced that neither Dorabella nor Fiordiligi (Amanda Echalaz) can be faithful to their beaus.

"Dorabella is a young girl who's very excitable and very curious about love and sex; she is fun and flirtatious, warm and giving, over the top and over emotional, and she gets in over her head because she doesn't look before she leaps. She's very impetuous. It's great fun to play her," Rachel says.

She last sang in York in 1998 as a guest soloist when the University of York Choir performed Brahms's Requiem at York Minster.

"I'm really looking forward to going back. It feels strange not to have been back for seven years," she says.

At university, Bedford-born Rachel studied French and linguistic science, rather than music.

"I thought linguistics and the French language would be more useful from the point of learning how language works, and I learnt a lot about phonetics and the vocal physiology, which has been extremely useful in my singing and my teaching," she says.

"Interestingly, my phonetics and phonology tutor, Professor John Local, had been a singer... until he suffered a rugby injury, or so he told us."

Rachel performed music regularly while in York from 1993 to 1996. "I was a member of the Yorkshire Bach Choir, I played violin in the university orchestra and sang in the university choir and chamber choir, and I used to do lunchtime concerts, and there was the busking too," she says.

After four years of post-graduate studies and a year as a junior fellow at the Royal College of Music, Rachel now divides her time between teaching and performing.

The performer in Rachel is in full flow in Cosi Fan Tutte after a difficult opening night. "I had a bit of a tough time in rehearsals, when I couldn't sing for four weeks because of laryngitis, so I just rehearsed the dramatic part of the role," she says.

"The first time I sang was the first night, and the critics weren't complimentary that night, but the company was very supportive, and one thing we have to bear in mind as performers is that the critic's job is to be entertaining. At the end of the day, it's one person's opinion; ask 17 people and they will have 17 different highlights."

English Touring Opera presents Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte, on Monday, and Donizetti's Mary Queen Of Scots, Tuesday, at York Theatre Royal, 7.30pm. Box office: 01904 623568.

Updated: 16:16 Thursday, May 05, 2005