The new star of the world opera appears with a hat, puffy feathers and sports shoes with phosphor green soles in the middle of the snow.
She illuminates with a welcome in the middle of the street and an expansive smile the gray morning that falls leaden and cold on the entrance of the imposing and labyrinthine National Theater of Warsaw.
A building located in the center of the city where she was born, lives and has been trained since she was little.
Today, at 33 years old, Jakub Józef Orliński rarely steps on it.
He is dedicated to his tours and the productions in which this countertenor participates, filling his baroque concerts with young audiences, with the power on stage that being a model has given him, and irritates some purists when, naturally, he finds the bridge on stage that unites his two passions: singing and
breakdancing
.
Only when he comes out, he marks his stunts.
“I'm not a fairground monkey,” he says, “it must be justified.”
Then, the dance and some pirouettes flow alongside his fresh and versatile voice, trained since he was a child in the Gregorian choir of the Polish capital.
Ask anyone who has seen him live about Orliński.
To those who have felt his freshness and his charisma.
To those who, anywhere, have enjoyed his purifying song, with a tremendous carrying capacity.
These are qualities already proven in someone who has fought to reach the top, well-formed, trained and with a balance between maturity and enthusiasm.
Two factors that push him towards the search for new forms within his baroque field to seduce an enthusiastic public, but thirsty for new incentives.
“I look for naturalness, not perfection.
To the point that, sometimes, I feel better on stage than off stage.”
Perhaps in this way he achieves that transmission of emotions that brings him closer to the sense of his mission as an artist.
For everything to work, says Orliński, external factors play a role: “The public, which fulfills a mutual task with you.”
Or space, too.
The singer is aware of this because the day he thought he intuited his destiny, the place where he was revealed to be fundamental.
“It was in the cathedral of Cologne, in Germany, where we went to sing with the choir.”
The sound between the walls of that Gothic temple more than 150 meters high and with a volume of almost 8,000 square meters shocked him.
“To the point that my first album,
Anima sacra,
is inspired by that experience.”
“I have an acrobatic character, but I am not a circus attraction,” says Jakub Józef Orliński.Anna Liminowicz (Contact)
He was attracted to architecture since he was a child because of his grandfather, who practiced it.
Orliński grew up in an artistic environment, with painter parents, too.
The fusion between art, music and space subjugated him.
“I understood what spiritual greatness meant within that dimension.
Maybe that's where it all begins, in my case, as a revelation to follow a certain path.
It has nothing to do, on the other hand, with a Catholic god, rather with a transcendence that speaks to all of us about a liberating faith.
"The one that drives us to break chains, not to tie us down."
Before, he had been a choir boy with an alto voice in a group that changed his life.
“I entered when I was eight years old and I was there until I was 21.”
Childhood and adolescence.
The first, a happy time without turbulence.
The second, with his conflicts.
“It was like a second home.
The experience in the choir transformed me, they not only taught me my vocation, but also something as important as the pleasure of performing music for the pleasure of doing it, with no more aspirations than that.”
This is how he assimilated it today.
But when he was turning 15, 16 years old, at the height of his turkey age, everything didn't fit so well.
Surrounded by athletic friends and uncontrolled testosterone, he felt strange.
He was embarrassed to tell his colleagues at the institute.
"It was not 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, when my voice changed and I chose to be a countertenor, like a castrato, was not going to be cool to them.
I was afraid they would laugh at me,” he recalls.
Then he discovered
breakdancing.
An escape valve, apparently disparate, but which nevertheless became a middle and very motivating path.
“That saved me, it gave me confidence, there I could demonstrate my skills.”
It is a very open culture, it welcomes everyone, says Orliński.
“The way you stage the ritual, in circles, the fact that you have to turn that exhibition space into something yours requires security.
You only pass it on if you feel good about yourself.
Therefore, that experience of street culture and currents like hip hop help me a lot in my baroque singing.
My circle there is the stage,” he says.
Breakdancing spurred
him
towards his baroque space.
So Orliński knows how to connect points, for many, radically opposite.
Something that denotes a fundamental characteristic in him, as stated by Giulio D'Alessio, director and viola player of the Il Pomo d'Oro group.
“His originality,” says the Italian musician.
“For us, he is a special artist, because of that and because of his creativity, we enjoy him a lot.
And he is able to drag many young people to classical or baroque music concerts,” he adds.
Before going on stage, like here in Bologna in 2022, avoid reading the news, but Orliński is a committed artist, as shown by his bond with the Ukrainian flag.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 last.
"We want to continue collaborating with him after these four recordings and hundreds of concerts around the world", such as those held last week at the Canary Islands Festival, says D'Alessio and before he arrives in Madrid on February 20 with Michal Biel.
Orliński's own consciousness as a singer meant a path of right choices and setbacks.
The latter, not hard enough to knock him down.
“I am a determined person,” he says.
His first big dilemma arose when he changed his voice.
“As a child he sang as an alto and soprano, the change came very smoothly and came with a tone suitable for a bass baritone.
But it seemed to me that he should try to sing higher.”
Orliński did not 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 then: “What's wrong?
Do you want to offend me?
That voice... But he quickly convinced us with albums by Philippe Jaroussky, David Daniels or Andreas Scholl, my favorite.
He opened a world to me.”
He began to study seriously.
He needed time and money.
“I asked a teacher to pose as a model in drawing classes and I took advantage of those downtime to study music.”
She began taking classes with Ewa Komorowska.
She prepared him for the entrance exams for Fryderyk Chopin University.
She then placed herself in the hands of another fundamental teacher, the mezzo Anna Radziejewska.
“He taught me a lot, especially how to train by myself.
She was harsh, she didn't praise you;
When you achieved the goal, you moved on to the next one, and as the exams approached, it reinforced your confidence.”
Fighting to maintain that trust has been difficult for him.
Today he remembers the period in which he wanted to continue training in the United States.
His mentor, Eytan Pessen, advised him to do so.
The Curtis Institute in Philadelphia was the target.
He made it to the end of the tests.
“I went, I spent the savings I had earned working as a model.”
They didn't choose him.
The second option was Juilliard, in New York.
There he was also selected, but in the last test they did not admit him either.
He protested and entered.
He had no money left, barely.
“I lived on bananas and peanut butter for a long time.”
They had promised him a full scholarship and only awarded him a half.
He found himself a Fulbright that covered all his expenses.
From school to his apartment in Washington Heights he knew what the artist's experience entails in the city that threatens to devour him and the only thing he has to avoid being swallowed up is a dream and a lot of will.
Naturally,
breakdancing
helped him… “I never got depressed, if I see obstacles I don't crash.
I either go around them, make a hole underneath or jump over them and go through them, I look for solutions.
I hate when someone tells me I can't do something.
It pisses me off a lot and I strive to show that I am capable of tackling it much better than I myself believe.”
At the same time, he knows how to gauge his flaws.
“Sometimes I sound like a headless chicken, okay, but I never lack motivation.”
Jakub Józef Orliński, outside the National Theater in Warsaw, the city where this world star of baroque opera was born and lives.Anna Liminowicz (Contact)
With that mentality in favor, as soon as I left Juilliard, the competition stage arrived.
He won three, including the Metropolitan in 2016, all in New York.
After passing those tests, with well-armed security, his first big opportunity appeared at the Aix-en-Provence festival (France), one of the most prestigious in the world.
It was in 2017, the year of its global takeoff.
There he was offered a role in the opera
Erismena,
by Francesco Cavalli, alongside the Argentine director Leonardo García-Alarcón, who remembers: “From the first moment I saw him I knew he was going to have a great career,” says this musician and teacher. from the Geneva Conservatory.
“He is a frontal artist, one of those who establish instant communication with the public like very few others, with great sensitivity for harmony and melody,” he says.
By then, Orliński already had several solid tools at his disposal.
The first, acquired in his childhood, within the choir: “You learn to listen and react to gel and intertwine, adapt your sound to others to unify it as a whole.
“Things that come from those years of learning in the choir.”
It is something that García-Alarcón quickly noticed in him as well: “His ability to listen to others is something exceptional.
If you add to that his physique and his rhythmic talent, when it comes to putting on an opera it is fantastic,” says the Argentine musician.
His acrobatic appearance worked both for him and for anyone who wanted to take advantage of him in any show.
“Dancing makes me happy and keeps me in shape.
I adapt it to the baroque, yes, but that came about by chance.
People accept it because the audience is young, although I know that many others are repelled by it.
For me it's organic, I just do it if it comes to me: I dance, I jump, as it comes to me.
I have an acrobatic character, but I am not a circus attraction.
If a stage director asks me, he has to justify it, give me a reason.”
To this he also adds another factor, his old job as a model, to which he could have dedicated himself beyond serving him for mere survival when he was studying.
“I tried it when he was very desperate financially.
And now, sometimes they ask me.
If they propose it to me, it's easy for me."
And so she has become the cover of magazines like
Elle
or
Vogue,
apart from deserving an article in
The Newyorker
.
That gives her a portion of her popularity and her fan phenomenon.
Above all, in her country, Poland, where she feels more comfortable after the last elections last October.
The polls removed the ultra-conservative Law and Justice party from power and proclaimed the Civic Coalition of pro-European Donald Tusk the winner.
"I'm happy.
Hopefully the result brings new change and freshness.
We have emerged from something similar to the Middle Ages.
“It frustrated me not being able to do certain things, it made me anxious.”
She also stimulated her curiosity: “I like to know what's going on in all the countries I go to, it's good to build bridges.
Music can entertain us, but it can also form and transform us.
I think it is an art that repels doctrine and seeks dialogue and understanding,” she 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 relieves him.
“I am especially happy for the young people, who have fought for it, who stood in lines for five hours to vote.
I consider it crucial that we know how to use our rights and powers as citizens to change things, find out and avoid being manipulated.”
Although never before going on stage.
At that time he avoids any contact with anything that darkens his mood.
“Before jumping in front of the public I try not to read the news because I can break down with the way the world is.
Asking myself: 'Why entertain someone when horrible 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 I try to convey a certain happiness in the midst of so much disaster.”
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