Jakub Józef Orliński

Jakub Józef Orliński (born December 8, 1990, Warsaw, Poland) is a Polish countertenor known for his angelic voice and tasteful interpretations of Baroque pieces. His penchant for break dancing, his active social media presence, and his classically good looks amused the opera world and attracted the attention of a younger audience.

Born to a middle-class artistic family, Orliński was the son of an artist mother and graphic designer father, with architect grandparents on both sides. At the age of eight he joined an all-male Gregorian choir, where he sang the boy-alto parts. He later became a semiprofessional skateboarder and joined a prizewinning break dancing group called the Skill Fanatikz Crew. At 16 years old Orliński began to sing the bass-baritone in his choir. Shortly after, however, he was convinced to sing falsetto when the men’s ensemble he and some of his fellow choir members had formed required two countertenors for a set of Renaissance chants.

Orliński continued to sing countertenor when he entered the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw (2009). He studied under mezzo-soprano Anna Radziejewska and wrote on Baroque ornamentation for his master’s thesis (2014). Orliński also performed throughout Poland and Germany, singing such roles as Cupid in John Blow’s 1680–85 opera Venus and Adonis (2013) and Ruggiero in George Frideric Handel’s 1735 opera Alcina (2014). In 2015 he moved to New York City to study under soprano Edith Wiens at the Juilliard School. While pursuing his second graduate degree (2017), he performed such roles as the refugee in Jonathan Dove’s 1998 opera Flight (2016) and Ottone in Handel’s 1710 opera Agrippina (2017). In 2016 he was named one of the five winners of the Metropolitan Opera’s National Council Auditions, a prestigious contest for young vocalists. This came a year after he won first prize in the Marcella Sembrich competition.

In 2017 Orliński made his debut at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, France, in the role of Orimeno in Francesco Cavalli’s 1655 opera Erismena. During the festival he sang “Vedrò con mio diletto,” an aria from Antonio Vivaldi’s 1724 opera Il Giustino on France Musique, the French national public radio station. Filling in for a last-minute cancellation and unaware that the concert would be livestreamed on Facebook, Orliński sang in casual attire, and it was perhaps the contrast between his disheveled appearance and his unearthly voice that garnered the video millions of views on Facebook and YouTube. He was immediately propelled to international stardom.

After the viral video Orliński sang the title role of Handel’s 1711 opera Rinaldo at Oper Frankfurt, Germany (2017), and at the Glyndebourne Festival, England (2019), and he performed solo recitals at Wigmore Hall, London (2018), and at Carnegie Hall, New York City (2019). In 2018 he released his debut album, Anima sacra, which features the orchestra Il Pomo d’Oro. For the recording, Orliński selected a number of relatively unknown Baroque pieces that his friend and collaborator, Yannis François, had transcribed. Orliński’s subsequent albums, Facce d’amore (2019) and Anima aeterna (2021), again include Il Pomo d’Oro and additional recordings of François’s transcriptions of Baroque pieces. Although a few of Orliński’s 2020 performances were postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic, he was back onstage in 2021. That year he debuted at the Metropolitan Opera, New York City, in a production of Eurydice, and in 2022 he portrayed Didymus in a contemporary adaptation of Handel’s Theodora at the Royal Opera House, London.