”Stagg mastery of Piave’s flowing libretto is faultless, particularly in the duet combining her creamy voice with Yurchuk’s rich baritone… Yurchuk is impressively convincing as a snobbish but concerned parent who rides roughshod over the feelings of this fallen woman before coming, too late, to regret his actions.”
”The Ukrainian baritone Yuriy Yurchuk was affecting as Giorgio Germont, stiff, cold, broken, but his voice warm and reverberant. You may recognise the name. He made news earlier this year when he sang his homeland’s national anthem at the gates of Downing Street”
The quality voice of the night is surely that of baritone Yuriy Yurchuk, in the role of Alfredo’s problematic father Giorgio Germont. Smoothly charismatic, his presence certainly poses intriguing possibilities about this role.
Yurchuk is compelling. His rich baritone carries the requisite gravitas when Giorgio Germont insists that Violetta part from his son to preserve his family’s honor and so as not to offend God. Later, wracked with regret for the tragic course of actions that he has unleashed, his poignant duet with Violetta is tenderly aching.
“Alfredo’s father, Giorgio, sung by Yuriy Yurchuk, possesses the same unwavering assurance but wields it self-servingly against Violetta and Alfredo, whose match he condemns. It was certainly strange to realize that Yurchuk is in fact five years younger than Stewart, given that he plays his father. Nonetheless, he embodies Giorgio’s gas-lighting intentions well, his booming baritone selfishly advertising his narrow worldview. It was an impressive performance, even if it lacked the gravitas of an older singer.”
“As the great Ukrainian baritone Yuri Yurchuk, who played Giorgio Germont, Alfredo's father, told me, this production majors in psychological truthfulness: "Cameron wanted us to know why we were doing or saying things". This was clear in De provenza, Georgio's diktat to his son about the unwisdom of his romantic course.
