Star countertenor, breakdancer and model Jakub Józef Orliński enjoys a challenge – and he’s now applying his boundless commitment and energy to the role of artistic director on his new recording of Gluck’s Orfeo, as he tells Rebecca Franks
PHOTOGRAPHY: JOHN MILLAR
To the sounds of a joyful 18th-century overture, a breakdancer wearing bright red leaps and turns, throwing himself upside down to spin in a handstand on two hands, then just one. It’s thrilling to watch, his acrobatics unexpectedly capturing the spirit of the music. A brilliant dancer in an opera production is no surprise, perhaps, but if you’ve ever encountered Jakub Józef Orliński before, you’ll have guessed by now that this whirling figure is no stunt double. He is also the same person who, later, sings with bewitching beauty about love and loss, joy and sorrow. Orliński’s voice is something special. So transfixing are his performances that more than 11 million people have watched him sing rare Vivaldi on YouTube, casually dressed, not expecting to be filmed, apparently hungover – and yet singing from the heart.
I’ve caught up with the Polish countertenor, 33, on Zoom, while he’s having his morning coffee (‘just a tiny one’) at home in Warsaw, preparing to embark on a 21-concert European tour for his Beyond programme. He’s fizzing with energy – and I don’t think it’s the caffeine; that’s simply his character. He sings, he breakdances, he lives life at full throttle, full of enthusiasm and curiosity. Since his first album, Anima Sacra, in 2018, he has earned a reputation for digging up rarely known Baroque gems and giving them the Midas touch. Beyond is classic Orliński. ‘Not just lavish, but groundbreaking,’ wrote The Sunday Times, naming it one of the best albums of 2023.
But we’re not here to talk about Monteverdi, Caccini and their 17th-century friends.
Orliński is excited to tell me about a rather different recording that’s out this April on his label Warner Classics. This time, Orliński has landed not on a clutch of arias, but a whole opera. And it’s not an obscure discovery by the likes of Saracini or Pallavacino, but a work that arguably changed the direction of musical history: Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice. It’s the piece in which the German composer put into practice his desire to shake up the opera world. As he later explained, he wanted to offer listeners ‘simplicity, truth and naturalness’. Lengthy da capo arias and recitativo secco (unaccompanied recita
