Many listeners first discovered Jakub Józef Orliński when France Musique released a video of him performing the aria “Vedrò con mio diletto” at a radio concert in 2017. Dressed casually in cargo shorts and tennis shoes, the Polish countertenor looks like any number of contemporary young men you might find lounging in a park on a warm summer day. Yet when he opens his mouth to sing Vivaldi’s lovely lament, a voice for the ages emerges, perfectly balanced between registers and with a rich, rounded timbre that’s both mellow and supple. A performance like this announced Orliński’s stature as an artist to watch on the world stage.
A string of high-profile engagements and recordings in the ensuing years has only confirmed that status. Orliński’s career has flourished throughout Europe and the United States, and more often than not, he’s had pianist Michał Biel by his side for the journey. Few relationships thrive on intimacy and unspoken connection quite like a singer and his accompanist, and in performances from their native Warsaw to Wigmore Hall, Orliński and Biel are claiming their place among the great pairs of all time.
The duo met as students at the Teatr Wielki Akademia Operowa in Warsaw. Both credited the education they received in their home country not only with forging their partnership but also preparing them for the rigors and realities of an international career. “I started having classes for about one week every month with a lot of people coming from around the world – singers, pianists, coaches, Alexander Technique teachers, stage directors,” Orliński told me in a recent joint interview with Biel. “There were really a lot of opportunities to learn from a lot of people who are actually in the business, doing great things in very big theaters.”
Biel praised the program’s structure and its emphasis on establishing connections between emerging artists and professionals already on the world stage. “It’s not like a usual opera studio, where you have a limited number of people that you work with for a certain period of time,” he said. “Program coordinator Beata Klatka organizes sessions with people who are not all the time in Warsaw but who come very frequently – for one or two weeks in a month. It’s very hard to meet those people when you are just in academia. I would say there is really no connection between those people and the educational system in Poland. That’s why we say that the goal of Akademia Operowa is to introduce young Polish students to how things are being made in the world of international opera. For them, it’s the first time to see how it’s really done in Berlin, how it’s really done in Stuttgart or London or Paris.”
This approach bears undeniable fruit, according to Orliński. “I am positively shocked that Akademia Operowa alumni are singing literally everywhere,” he said. “They are in Zurich, Stuttgart, Berlin, Munich and Aix-en-Provence. Super big places. As a freelancer, I travel around the world and I see that wow, we have this person who was in my year at Akademia Operowa, and this person who was a year after me. They are really doing well, and it’s because there was this bridge, this introduction to those people who could actually hear them, try them out and give them the job.”
For Orliński and Biel, the bridge from Akademia Operowa led first to the prestigious Juilliard School of Music, where they were not only colleagues but roommates. Yet even though both men raved about the experience of living in New York, they never strayed far from their Polish roots. During their American studies, they returned to Warsaw in 2016 for the International Stanisław Moniuszko Vocal Competition, claiming the grand prize with a program that celebrated the history and diversity of Polish song.
“Of course there was a certain preparation for the competition, but I don’t think it was a certain goal for a period of time,” Biel recalled. “We had been playing the repertoire and trying it out for an entire year. Because we had that contact with each other, we knew how it was supposed to go and had a very clear plan about it. We knew each other very well.”
Orliński jumped in with a further observation: “That was the also the period, especially in America, where it was very exciting, because we were at the age where we could actually benefit from it,” he said. “I played with Michał hundreds of auditions, so we were used to performing and being onstage in stressful situations. Going to Warsaw, the only thing I found difficult was that I was going to my hometown, and I was stressed somehow that my muscle memory would be connected to that place. I learned so much in New York that I was just afraid that I might come back to my old habits singing in Warsaw, where my whole musical journey started.”