“Baritone Yuriy Yurchuk created a truly persuasive and engaging portrait: as he stared, frowning, into the middle distance (entirely off-score), and sang with pained but noble expression of his frustration and moral bewilderment, there could be no doubting Gérard’s introspective agony nor his essential integrity, however flawed his actions. As he struggled to compose an indictment against Chénier, the sparse instrumentation revealed his anguish. His epiphanic recognition of the hate-fuelling self-destructiveness of his own jealousy, ‘Nemico della patria? … Un dì m’era di gioia’ – the highlight of the evening for me – conveyed anger, pride, self-castigation and was sung with elegant fervour and glorious freedom of line..”
"That said, it was arguably the singer that took the part of Carlo Gérard that lingered most in the memory: the Ukrainian baritone Yuriy Yurchuk. Sporting a tasteful Ukrainian flag-coloured bow on his lapel, Yurchuk absolutely owned the role of Gérard, his voice beautifully resonant and commanding, never drowned by the orchestra’s considerable forces. He acted the role well, too (despite the concert staging, he was clearly involved in the ongoing action); in his hands, Gérard became a major player at least on the level of Chénier himself."
