Interview, Jakub Józef Orliński on Gluck's Orfeo (transcript)

Jakub Józef Orliński has been to hell and back so many times over the past few years that he may as well have a season-ticket for the journey: the Polish countertenor has brought Gluck's Orfeo to life on stage in two contrasting stagings in San Francisco and Paris as well as in concerts across Europe, and a new recording of the opera (released on Erato at the end of April) sees him acting as co-artistic director alongside singing the title-role.

The morning after winning a Golden Fryderyk Award, Jakub spoke to me via video-call about why the Orfeo myth has captivated him since his high school days, how the experience of singing the role in two such different productions has informed his interpretation of the character, the challenges of pacing yourself emotionally and vocally in an opera where you're never off-stage, and what stepping into the booth during the recording-sessions taught him about 'reading the room' and inspiring a team...

When did you first fall under Orfeo’s spell, and what makes the role so iconic?

First of all the myth itself: the story is super-grabbing and catchy, and the idea of bringing somebody back from the dead because you love them so much is so beautiful and romantic. When I was in high school we had a brilliant teacher for art-history class, and he was so passionate about pointing out Orfeo and Euridice on certain sculptures.

Then at some point when I was studying Music at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw I encountered ‘Che farò?’ – of course it’s the most famous aria, but to be honest it’s my least favourite part of the opera!

Had you already performed ‘Che farò?’ in isolation before you dived into the full role?

I sang it a couple of times, including in the Debut Competition in Bad Mergentheim: in the finals I got to sing it with full orchestra, and it was super-nice. But it still didn’t crash me as the most beautiful piece. Back then I didn’t have the full context: even though I knew the plot of the opera and everything that leads up to the aria, I couldn’t actually put myself in there in the same way as I did on the recording.

By that time I’d sung Orfeo onstage at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, done a concert-tour with it and then gone out to San Francisco doing a completely different production, so now I feel as if I know this piece like the back of my hand! That’s a very good feeling, because then whichever part of the piece you sing you’re there right away – you know exactly how you’re supposed to feel and what baggage you have on your back!

You sang Orfeo in two contrasting productions last season, as well as on a concert-tour: what different facets of the role did each one explore?

The first one was Robert Carsen’s production which is quite well-known, and has been done by a lot of my friends: Carlo Vistoli, Philippe Jaroussky and David Daniels did it in America, so it’s been around for at least ten years. It’s not showy – this is the thing. Sometimes directors like to put on a real show that’s super-sparky with a lot of things going on, but this is not that: it’s very pure and intense. In Robert’s production you see that Orfeo is completely crushed at the very start of the opera: it opens with the choir bringing in the dead body of Euridice, and it’s soul-crushing. I remember finding it genuinely upsetting when I sang it for the first time in the general rehearsal – especially because Gluck wrote it in such a way that the first time you hear Orfeo’s voice he’s just screaming her name in grief. Dramaturgically speaking, it’s so perfectly written.

Robert’s production is so beautiful: the set-design and costumes are very simple, but he has some great ideas for the choir on that front (in the second act they’re basically just in loin-cloths, like souls in Hell). It’s all quite elemental: he makes really bold use of fire in the scene set in Hell, and then it transforms into Elysian with pools of water and generally floaty pleasant things! I had a lot of friends coming to see that show, and they all said it was really beautiful.

Another advantage of this opera is that it’s quite short: only about 75 minutes! In the Baroque era things often get so complicated that it reminds me of those Brazilian telenovelas where there are so many plots going on that you don’t really know which character is with whom, and how and why they know each other! But the beauty of Orfeo is that it’s so straightforward: the entire story is told in just over an hour, and the plot is so easy to follow.

And then we moved on and did a staged concert-version of that show - not the staging from Robert’s production, because we had a dancer portraying certain emotions. It was really nice to do that onstage at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées then suddenly be in the concert-venue and try to present the same journey in a different way, using different doors and different spaces of the hall.

The other factor is that at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées we did this production at A=430 (Classical pitch), then when I went to San Francisco we did it at A=440 (modern pitch). That was a production by Matthew Ozawa, a great stage-director; he worked in tandem with the choreographer Rena Butler, and it was extraordinary. It was two completely different worlds, because the San Francisco approach was very modern – there was almost nothing on stage, just a little hill thingie! But above that there were projections of brain-scans, so they were trying to actually show you what it’s like inside Orfeo’s head – you don’t really know whether it’s his dream or whether he’s going crazy…

They also did this really nice thing where Euridice and I had three doubles: they danced in couples to show different moments of their love and lives together. I was in red, she was in blue; we were super-colourful, then the other couples’ costumes were fading out, representing different stages of their relationship. It was really intriguing, and at the beginning [of rehearsals] I thought ‘Hmm, I’m curious to see if people will actually read that!’. But it was nicely done with a lot of dancing and physical stuff, and that was really challenging because Orfeo is on stage from the beginning to the very end - it was demanding!

What are the most challenging stretches of the role in terms of pacing and stamina?

In context 'Che farò' becomes very difficult, because it’s near the end of the opera and you’ve been through so much – you’ve only been singing for sixty-something minutes, but if you really live the story emotionally and vocally you’ll be drained. Regardless of what the staging is like, you can’t ever go into resting-mode in this opera; because it’s all about the Orfeo-Euridice-Amore triangle, you are the action at all times, and if you aren’t constantly engaged then nobody else will be! You have to be super-professional about calculating your energy.

Actually, I say ‘triangle’, but how could I forget the choir?! That’s one of the things I love most about this piece. The choir plays such an important role, commenting on everything and being part of the action – they bring such vitality to the entire opera.

Orfeo may undertake his journey alone, but you’re surrounded by friends on this recording! Was that by accident or design?

I am so lucky, because Warner Classics and Erato are the best – they give me every possible opportunity to do the projects I want. I called up Alain [Lanceron] and I said ‘Look, I’m doing Orfeo at Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, then on tour then in San Francisco this season…I know you recorded it just a few years back with Philippe Jaroussky, but this is one of the signature-roles for a countertenor and I would love to do as many times as possible’. I love doing the same pieces from different points of view – doing Orfeo in Paris and San Francisco was really entertaining and challenging for me, because I had to change. It was the same when I did Rinaldo with Robert Carsen and then Ted Huffman: it was extraordinary to do the same role and adjust vocally, including changing my ornamentation when I take a different approach to the staging.

Anyway, Alain said ‘Sure, why not?’, and I told him that I would love to do it with friends, including Stefan and his orchestra Il Giardino d’Amore. Fatma [Said] already recorded some motets with me on my album Anima Eterna and we have a personal friendship, so I said to Alain that I would love to have her. And then there’s Elsa [Dreisig] who is a phenomenal singer, just mind-blowing: I’m completely in love with her voice, and to have her on that recording is a huge thing for me because besides being a great singer she’s super-super-professional! We did a production of Mitridate Re di Ponto in Berlin which was cancelled right before the performance because of COVID; we spent one month together and became really good friends, so I just called her up and said ‘Hey Elsa, would you like to be my Euridice?’. Which felt a bit funny!

The choir and orchestra are made up of people that I’ve studied with in Warsaw or worked with on different projects; I must also mention my super-cool sound-engineer Mateusz Banasiuk, who worked on Adela and Farewells as well as some songs which we released as individual tracks. It was important for me to have this friendly, family environment for this project, and Stefan and I decided we would to co-direct this whole recording. We did two concerts beforehand, in Warsaw and in Szczecin – a very difficult city to pronounce! – and the three of us had a lot of meetings to make sure we were on the same page in terms of interpretation and recording the sound.

What did acting as joint artistic director involve once you got into the studio?

It’s very important to be clear on things like microphone-placement before you start recording: you can’t just put mics wherever you want and expect the sound-engineer to work magic! I was especially aware of that because we were recording in Dolby Atmos, which is a big thing for me – since Farewells I try to record everything like that, because it really makes a difference if the listener has separate monitors and speakers. So the preparation-stage was quite long, but by the time we got into the studio we were so ready – not least because Stefan knows this score completely by heart and could hum every single instrumental line!

I see Dolby Atmos as an architectural thing, because you can basically design the atmosphere. In the first act, for instance, we’ve designed it so that Orfeo sounds as if he’s on the ground, and Amore (Fatma Said) is always singing from above; for the scene in Hell we have the full choir from back and below, and it blows you sideways! It’s really storytelling on another level, and Mateusz knows exactly how to design these things: when I listened in the studio I was like ‘Woah, this is some good stuff, man – really juicy!’.

There are some incredible thunder-and-lightning effects in that Hades scene – what went into creating them?

It’s not computer-generated – it’s an actual instrument! We had a tornado-machine which is basically a huge wheel: if you turn it slowly it makes a little bit of a noise, then when you go faster it’s crazy!

Would you ever be tempted to go one step further and direct a fully-staged production of the opera yourself?

I’ve actually never thought about that, but I don’t think it’s my thing for now at least! But it was really fun to actually be in the sound-engineering booth with a microphone, piping up with ‘Hey guys, can you mark a little break in Bar 35?’! Because Stefan was out there conducting, he wasn’t able to hear how everything sounded back there, so when I wasn’t recording my bits I was in the booth trying to help him and Mateusz get the effects we’d decided we wanted. It was an extraordinary experience: I think I’ve learned a lot about how to communicate certain things to people and how to read their energy to motivate them more, without cutting them off or make them feel uncomfortable. There’s a whole sociological thing going on during recordings, and as a director you have to be able to read the room and help to get the best out of the people you have. And these guys really were the best!