Returning to Northern Eire Opera for his third position, British-Ukrainian baritone Yuriy Yurchuk talks about his persevering with exploration of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin

Yuriy Yurchuk

Baritone Yuriy Yurchuk sings the title position in Northern Eire Opera‘s new manufacturing of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin which opens on 14 September 2024 on the Grand Opera Home, Belfast, directed by Cameron Menzies and performed by Dominic Limburg, with a solid together with Mary McCabe, Carolyn Dobbin, Sarah Richmond, Jenny Bourke and Norman Reinhardt. Yuri carried out within the firm’s productions of La Boheme in 2021 and La Traviata in 2022, while his performances of Eugene Onegin have included the New Nationwide Theatre in Tokyo earlier this 12 months, the Royal Danish Opera in Copenhagen and La Monnaie, Brussels in 2023

Yuriy Yurchuk at Royal Danish Opera

When Yuri and I spoke, he was in Savolinna in Finland, the place he was about to make his position debut within the title position of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. He feedback that with the performances happening within the Medieval citadel, entrances and exits contain a variety of operating about and negotiating outdated staircases and uneven darkish locations. He provides that the standard of the productions at Savolinna is astonishing, and he had nothing however admiration for this 12 months’s new manufacturing of Verdi’s Nabucco, directed by Rodula Gaitanou. Don Giovanni is a revival, and Yuriy feedback on the way in which productions can tackle lives of their very own, inside what’s an attractive set the solid can play with the drama, and so they have a variety of freedom. This 12 months, Don Giovanni has two casts and the unique intention was for them to do the identical factor, however every solid has migrated in direction of doing what the singers really feel. He was discovering the method thrilling, with the Don being a really fascinating position.

Yuriy has a far longer acquaintance with Eugene Onegin, having first sung the position in Kyiv in 2016, with subsequent appearances together with Tokyo, Copenhagen and Brussels, alongside a Royal Opera Home Covent Backyard younger artists efficiency. Inevitably, his first efficiency of the position was very thrilling, and he needed to work quite a bit on forming the character and he talks about bridging the hole between you and the character, layering on the performing make-up. With performances in numerous productions, he finds his work turning into extra nuanced. In every new manufacturing, he can attempt various things and feels that his interpretation will get higher. He describes opera as an onion, peeling again layers, and including extra element within the language and the performing.

Relating to Eugene Onegin the opera, he feels it actually must be referred to as Tatyana as she is the one whose character has an actual arc to it, she is the fascinating character. Onegin does probably not change a lot. Yuriy sees the principle lesson within the opera as being a research of battle between people who find themselves comparatively shut to one another. Onegin is older than Lensky and may know higher, however his disregard for battle, for folks’s lives, ends tragically. Yuriy feels that that is the worst a part of Onegin’s character, worse than his therapy of Tatyana.

Within the last scene, what comes out is Onegin’s egotism, successfully saying I prefer it so I would like it. Yuriy questions whether or not Onegin actually loves Tatyana, and he feels that it’s simply fundamental ardour, she reminds Onegin of the previous, and he sees her as attainable redemption. However he places himself above all the things, with out serious about the influence of his actions. And you’ll argue that he’s like this all through the opera. By the point we come to the ultimate scene, Onegin has travelled overseas, however he has not modified a lot.

Tchaikovsky: Eugene Onegin – solid together with Yuriy Yurchuk as Onegin – New Nationwide Theatre, Tokyo 2024 (Photograph: Chikaramaru Hotta)

The fantastic thing about performing a task in numerous productions is that you simply get to debate it with totally different administrators, attempt totally different approaches and look at totally different features of the character. You course of all this enter from different folks, and your efficiency grows.

However on the finish of the day, Yuriy sees the performers as being there to inform a narrative, regardless of the fashion of manufacturing and the director’s tackle the work. If the viewers sees a radical tackle the opera and it is smart to them and resonates with them, then the performers have accomplished their job. If the director is sensible sufficient to drag out the wild card and the viewers understands and feels, then it is a constructive consequence, they’re telling the story. For Yuriy, all of it comes all the way down to this telling of tales, he has seen some productions that didn’t make sense however others that have been radical but actually resonated. The fantastic thing about Eugene Onegin is that the libretto is sparse so although the dialogue is particular, the likelihood for subtext is powerful. The solid can deal with phrases in another way every time, layering them with visible subtext.

Yuriy has largely carried out the opera with non-Russian talking casts and is normally stunned by the standard of the diction, and he goes on to say chatting to a tenor throughout rehearsals on the belief that the person was Russian primarily based on the way in which he sang the position. However Yuriy, who relies within the UK, provides that he’s now extra English-speaking than Russian-speaking.

Wanting forward, after Don Giovanni in Savolinna, he’s doing Verdi’s Don Carlo with Opéra de Baugé, although there’s a little bit of a problem as there’s solely every week between one ending and the opposite starting. Additional forward, he has Michele in Puccini’s Il Tabarro with Lithuanian Nationwide Opera, after which he says ‘We are going to see’. Relating to different Tchaikovsky roles, he has sung in Iolanta (with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conductor Vasily Petrenko on the Royal Albert Corridor and with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra this Spring performed by Kirill Karabits, see the evaluate in Opera In the present day), which he describes as one other lovely piece to do. On his want listing is Yeletsky, in Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades, and he feedback that he’s searching for that.

Verdi: La Traviata – Yuriy Yurchuk, Siobhan Stagg – Northern Eire Opera, 2024

Onegin shall be his third position with Northern Eire Opera, and one of many causes for returning is to work with Cameron Menzies, who Yuriy describes as fairly wonderful, including that his productions make sense, telling the story nicely however with a component of shock. Menzies can be delicate in the case of engaged on the characters. Yuriy likes the setting at Northern Eire Opera, and enjoys working there. His first opera with them was La Boheme in 2021, simply after lockdown and in a church, which was fairly an intimate expertise and an incredible privilege to be a part of.