The new star of the world opera appears in the middle of the snow with a hat, fluffy feathers and sports shoes with phosphorus green soles. With a welcome in the middle of the street and an expansive smile, he illuminates the gray morning that falls leaden and cold at the entrance to Warsaw's imposing and labyrinthine National Theater. A building in the center of the city where he was born, lives and has been educated since childhood. Today, at 33, Jakub Józef Orliński rarely steps on it. He dedicates himself to his tours and the productions in which this countertenor takes part, filling his baroque concerts with the power on stage that modeling gives him, with a young audience, and he irritates some purists when, of course, he puts the bridge on the The stage finds his two passions combined: singing and breakdancing. Only when it comes out does he mark his acrobatics. “I'm not a carnival monkey,” he says, “it has to be justified.” Then the dance and a few pirouettes flow alongside his fresh and versatile voice, which he has trained since his childhood in the Gregorian choir in the Polish capital.
Ask anyone who has seen him live about Orliński. To those who felt his freshness and charisma. For those who have somewhere enjoyed his cleansing song with its enormous carrying capacity. These are qualities that have already proven themselves in those who have been well educated, trained and fought to reach the top with a balance between maturity and enthusiasm. Two factors that drive him to search for new forms in his baroque field in order to seduce an audience committed but thirsty for new stimuli.
“I look for naturalness, not perfection. So much so that sometimes I feel better on stage than off stage.” Perhaps in this way he is able to transmit emotions that bring him closer to the meaning of his mission as an artist. In order for everything to work, says Orliński, external factors play a role: “The public, which fulfills a common task with you.” Or the space. The singer is aware of this because on the day he thought he felt his destiny, in the place where it turned out to be fundamental, it was revealed. “It was in Cologne Cathedral in Germany, where we sang with the choir.” The sound between the walls of the more than 150 meter high Gothic temple with a volume of almost 8,000 square meters shocked him. “So much so that my first album, Anima Sacra, is inspired by this experience.”
“I have an acrobatic character, but I am not a circus attraction,” says Jakub Józef Orliński.Anna Liminowicz (Contact)
He was drawn to architecture as a child because his grandfather practiced it. Orliński grew up in an artistic environment, including with his parents, who were painters. The fusion of art, music and space subjugated him. “I understood what spiritual greatness means in this dimension. Maybe that's where everything begins, in my case, as a revelation, to go a certain way. On the other hand, it is not about a Catholic God, but about a transcendence that speaks to us all of a liberating faith. “The one who drives us to break chains, not to bind us.”
Previously, he worked as a choir boy with an alto voice in a group that changed his life. “I started when I was eight and was there until I was 21.” Childhood and youth. The first: a happy time without turbulence. The second with its conflicts. “It was like a second home. The experience in the choir changed me, they not only taught me my calling, but also something as important as the joy of playing music for the joy of it, without having any more ambition.” That's how he has internalized it today. But when he turned 15 or 16, at the peak of his turkey age, things didn't go so well. Surrounded by athletic friends and uncontrolled testosterone, he felt strange. He was embarrassed to tell his schoolmates. “It wasn't easy. He didn't invite them to concerts. I was afraid of causing rejection. They played basketball, tennis, video games… Me too, but I was sure that my way of singing turned out to be mine “My voice changed and I decided becoming a countertenor, like a castrato, wouldn't be cool for them. I was afraid they would laugh at me,” he recalls.
Then he discovered breakdancing. A seemingly disparate escape valve that nevertheless became a middle and very motivating path. “That saved me, it gave me self-confidence, I was able to demonstrate my skills.” “It's a very open culture, it welcomes everyone,” says Orliński. “The way you stage the ritual in the circle, the fact that you have to transform this exhibition space into something of your own, requires security. You only pass it on when you feel good. Therefore, these experiences with street culture and movements like hip hop help me a lot with my baroque singing. My circle there is the stage,” he says.
Breakdancing spurred him on to his baroque space. So Orliński knows how to connect points that, for many, are completely opposite. Something that denotes a fundamental quality of his, as noted by Giulio D'Alessio, leader and viola player of the group Il Pomo d'Oro. “It's originality,” comments the Italian musician. “For us he is a special artist, because of that and because of his creativity we enjoy him a lot.” And it is able to attract many young people to concerts of classical or baroque music,” he adds.
Before going on stage, like here in Bologna in 2022, one should avoid reading the news, but Orliński is a committed artist, as his attachment to the Ukrainian flag shows.Roberto Serra (Iguana Press/Gett
Together with the group, Orliński has already recorded four of his six albums for the Erato label: the first two, Anima sacra, Facce d'amore; Anima aeterna and Beyond, the ultimate. “We want to continue the collaboration with him after these four recordings and hundreds of concerts around the world,” says D'Alessio, such as last week's Canary Islands Festival, before coming to Madrid with Michal Biel on February 20.
Orliński's own consciousness as a singer meant a path full of right decisions and setbacks. The latter wasn't hard enough to knock him down. “I am a goal-oriented person,” he says. His first major dilemma came when his voice changed. “As a child I sang as an alto and a soprano, the transition went smoothly and resulted in a tone suitable for a bass-baritone. But it seemed to me that I should try to sing higher.” Orliński didn’t know what a countertenor was. He entered a workshop and the teacher told him that he could become one. He didn’t take it very well at the time: “What’s going on? Do you want to insult me? That voice… But he quickly convinced us with albums by Philippe Jaroussky, David Daniels and Andreas Scholl, my favorite. “It opened up a world for me.”
He began to study seriously. I needed time and money. “I asked a teacher to act as a model in drawing class, and I used this free time to study music.” He began taking lessons with Ewa Komorowska. She prepared him for the entrance exams for Fryderyk Chopin University. He then passed into the hands of another primary school teacher, the mezzo-soprano Anna Radziejewska. “He taught me a lot, especially how to train on my own. She was harsh, she didn't praise you; Once you achieved the goal, you moved on to the next one and as the exams got closer, your confidence increased.”
It was difficult for him to maintain this trust. Today he remembers the time when he wanted to continue his education in the USA. His mentor, Eytan Pessen, advised him to do so. The Curtis Institute in Philadelphia was the destination. He made it to the end of the tests. “I went and spent the savings I had earned modeling.” They didn't choose him. The second option was Juilliard in New York. He was selected there too, but was not admitted to the last exam either. He protested and entered.
He barely had any money left. “I lived on bananas and peanut butter for a long time.” They had promised him a full scholarship and only awarded him half. He found a Fulbright contract that covered all of his costs. From school to his apartment in Washington Heights, he learned what the artist's experience entails in the city that threatens to swallow him up, and the only thing he has left to avoid being swallowed up is a dream and a lot Will. Of course, breakdancing helped him… “I never got depressed, when I see obstacles, I don't crash. Either I go around them, make a hole under them, or jump over them and go through them, I look for solutions. I hate it when someone tells me I can't do something. It's really getting on my nerves and I'm trying to show that I can handle it much better than I think.” At the same time, he knows how to assess his mistakes. “Sometimes I sound like a headless chicken, okay, but I never lack motivation.”
Jakub Józef Orliński, in front of the National Theater in Warsaw, the city where this world star of baroque opera was born and lives.Anna Liminowicz (Contact)
With this mentality, the competitive phase began as soon as I left Juilliard. He won three, including the Metropolitan in 2016, all in New York. After passing these tests with well-armed security guards, his first big opportunity came at the festival in Aix-en-Provence (France), one of the most prestigious in the world. It was in 2017, the year of his global breakthrough. There he was offered a role in Francesco Cavalli's opera Erismena alongside Argentine director Leonardo García-Alarcón, who recalls: “From the first moment I saw him, I knew he would have a great career” says this musician and teacher. from the Geneva Conservatory. “He is a frontal artist, one of those who establish direct communication with the audience like no other, with great sensitivity for harmony and melody,” he says.
At this point, Orliński already had several solid tools. The first he acquired in his childhood in the choir: “You learn to listen and react, to connect and connect, to adapt your sound to others in order to unify it as a whole.” “Things that come from the years of learning in the choir.” García-Alarcón quickly noticed that about him: “His ability to listen to others is something extraordinary. “If you add to that his physique and his rhythmic talent, he is fantastic when it comes to putting an opera on stage,” says the Argentine musician.
His acrobatic demeanor worked for both him and anyone who wanted to exploit him in a show. “Dancing makes me happy and keeps me in shape. I adapt it to the Baroque, yes, but that came about by accident. People accept it because the audience is young, although I know many others are turned off by it. For me it's organic, I just do it when it comes to me: I dance, I jump, as it occurs to me. I have an acrobatic character, but I'm not a circus attraction. If a director asks me, he has to justify himself, give me a reason.”
There is also another factor, his previous job as a model, which he could have devoted himself to during his studies without only serving to survive. “I tried it when I was very desperate financially. And now sometimes they ask me. If they suggest it to me, it's easy for me. And so it became the cover of magazines like Elle and Vogue and also earned an article in the New Yorker. This gives him his share of popularity and fan phenomenon. Especially in his country Poland, where he feels more comfortable after the last elections last October. The polls have toppled the ultra-conservative Law and Justice party from power and declared the pro-European Donald Tusk's Citizens' Coalition the winner. “I'm happy. Hopefully the result will bring new variety and freshness. We have emerged from something similar to the Middle Ages. “It frustrated me not being able to do certain things, it scared me.” It also aroused his curiosity: “I I would like to know what's going on in every country I travel to. It's good to build bridges.” Music can entertain us, but it can also shape and change us. I think it's an art that teaches rejects and looks for dialogue and understanding,” he says.
Jakub Józef Orliński poses in the hall of the National Theater in Warsaw, the city where this world star of Baroque opera was born and lives.Anna Liminowicz (Contact)
The new panorama makes it easier for him. “I am especially happy for the young people who fought for this and stood in line for five hours to vote. I think it's crucial that we know how to use our rights and powers as citizens to change things, find out and avoid manipulation.” But never before on stage. At this moment, avoid any contact with anything that dampens your mood. “Before I go out in front of the public, I try not to read the news because I can break down with the way the world is. I ask myself, “Why entertain someone when terrible things happen?” I like to convey beauty and hope in the face of tragic stories. I think it's my duty. You fight with it, you take a stand. “I am very empathetic and try to convey some happiness in the midst of so many disasters.”
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