Meet the breakdancing opera star who played at the Olympics opening ceremony

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Jakub Jozef Orlinski is rarely in repose, but right now he’s like a manic puppy. “It’s a historical moment,” he exclaims, eyes gleaming, before adding, perhaps unnecessarily: “I’m super-excited!”
He’s not, at this point, talking about his career, spectacular though that is. At 33 he’s certainly the world’s most famous Polish breakdancing, skateboarding, modelling countertenor. But his excitement in this case is that breakdancing (or just “breaking” as it now tends to be known) has become an Olympic sport for the first time.
Orlinski won’t actually be competing in the Paris Games. “I’ve been breaking since 2010 but I’m nowhere close to those guys,” he says. “They are flying, like gravity doesn’t exist.” But that didn’t stop him making a surprise appearance in the Games’ opening ceremony, singing an aria from Les Indes galantes by the baroque composer Jean-Philippe Rameau while breakdancing on a barge in the pouring rain — a moment he shared with his 225,000 Instagram followers.
It wasn’t the first time, and is not likely to be the last, that Orlinski has done something eye-popping, as well as body-popping, on the opera stage. Last month the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées staged Vivaldi’s opera L’Olimpiade and hired Orlinski not only to sing a leading role but also to demonstrate the new Olympic sport as part of the show.
“It was super-challenging to sing and dance simultaneously in this extreme way,” he says. “We had a dance battle during the opera. You needed enormous breath control. But I loved the intensity, the comedy, the fun, the release.”
Five years ago at Glyndebourne Orlinksi rode a bicycle in mid-air while singing the title role in Handel’s Rinaldo. He followed that by pole dancing, in a fetching mini-skirt and platform heels, in the composer’s Theodora at the Royal Opera House. The same year, he appeared on the cover of Polish Vogue.
“I do a lot of things that are quite ridiculous and funny,” Orlinski says. “I get hired not only because I can sing but because I have a particular set of physical skills and the director has an idea of how to use them. Or they are happy for me to adjust the staging to suit myself.”
• Jakub Jozef Orlinski: ‘Singing on a BMX is very challenging’
I suspect he won’t be pole dancing, in drag or otherwise, when he gives the first-morning recital of this summer’s Edinburgh International Festival, nor when he opens the Wigmore Hall’s new season in September. But even when he’s doing what countertenors are supposed to do — sing arias from baroque operas — Orlinski likes to remake them to suit his irreverent character.
That’s apparent from his latest album, modishly titled #LetsBaRock. On it, he sings a lot of familiar 17th and 18th-century pieces, but reharmonised and given a 21st-century makeover with the help of his regular pianist/composer partner Aleksander Debicz (who does a lot of the arrangements), a backing team of Polish pop musicians and a lot of moody synthesized backgrounds.
For Purcell’s Sound the Trumpet, Orlinski vocalises like a muted trumpet, while for a pastiche Bach number called Toccata he does a rap in a raspy baritone. To say it’s a little weird is like saying that the Atlantic is a little wet. But Orlinski seems sanguine, indeed positively thrilled, about the likelihood of #LetsBaRock raising the hackles of the purists.
“I’m completely aware that there are certain people who will say: ‘Why would you do this? It’s not fun,’” he says. “And that’s fine. Not everything is for everybody. I have done very pure classical albums in the past, but this is me expressing myself as an artist.
“And it’s not because I want to reshape the classical world — it’s just my inner hunger to do different things. And to give something to the young people who follow me on Instagram. I want them to think, ‘Oh my gosh, I didn’t know I needed Purcell and Monteverdi in my life, but now I do.’”
In the same spirit he now sings at rock festivals. “In 2022 we got an offer from the producer of Meskie Granie, which is the biggest summer festival in Poland,” Orlinski says. “It’s like your Hyde Park or Reading festivals: thousands of people with beer and hot dogs listening to rock, rap and pop. Well, we played on the main stage doing classical music but with a twist.”
How did the crowd respond? “I was blown away, because actually I was very stressed about how it would be received. You spend your life in classical music performing to people who know what to expect, and then you are suddenly in this environment where the audience is mainly there to see some famous hip-hop group who are on after you.
“As soon as we started we had a technical problem. So I did six minutes of stand-up comedy while it was fixed. Actually, that was the best thing that could have happened, because it relaxed people.”
Does he think many of the audience had heard a countertenor before? “That’s what I said to them before I started,” Orlinski says. “I said, ‘You might be shocked by the sound I’m producing — but actually you’ve heard it before.’ Pop singers like Justin Timberlake and Justin Bieber all go into falsetto for the high register. It’s just that they aren’t trained in the operatic way.”
Would he sing at Glastonbury? “I would love to! We are going back to Meskie Granie this summer, and we want to do more pop festivals next summer.”
In one sense Orlinski has come a long way from his starting point, singing in a male-voice choir in Warsaw. They needed high voices and Orlinski, then a teenage baritone, lost out in the draw to decide who had the indignity of singing falsetto. He proved rather good at it, so much so that he started a journey of vocal training that culminated in a place at the Juilliard School in New York.
In another sense, however, he has stayed true to his roots. He still seeks out skateboarding parks and breakdancing classes wherever he happens to be singing. And he still lives in Warsaw, about which he waxes lyrical. “Wonderful parks, wonderful culture, wonderful cafés and bars. I bring my friends from America and other European countries there and they are, ‘Wow, wow, wow.’ Plus, food-wise, outstanding.”
Really? Polish cuisine doesn’t have the greatest reputation. “People just aren’t educated about it,” Orlinski says. “To be fair, we do have those heavy soups. But also very light soups.”
He has always taken inspiration, he says, from the whole spectrum of singers and musical genres. “I love the beautiful timbres of countertenors such as Andreas Scholl, but I also take inspiration from people with really meaty, soulful voices like Ewa Podles [the magnificent Polish mezzo-soprano who died this year]. Plus hip-hop bands, funk music, house music, all sorts. I learnt things from all of them.”
What next? “You know, sometimes performers struggle because they don’t have new ideas. That’s not me. I have ideas all the time. It’s both a curse and a blessing. But I’m still super young and super hungry. I’m still working on my voice and lots of other things. On my computer I have plans for three or four new albums that I could record right now.”
So no resting on laurels then? “Never,” he replies. “If you rest or stay the same, you are actually regressing.”Orlinski sings at the Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, on August 3 (eif.co.uk) and at the Wigmore Hall, W1, on September 12 (wigmore-hall.org.uk). #LetsBaRock is released on Erato on September 27