How do you sweep the public and the music critics off their feet at the age of thirty? By becoming an opera star in two seasons thanks to a countertenor voice and a break-dancer’s physique! This is undoubtedly one of the fastest and most astonishing achievements in classical music, highlighting the baroque repertoire. For this new programme, Jakub Józef Orliński has chosen to work with his Polish compatriots of the Ensemble Il Giardino d'Amore led from the violin by Stefan Plewniak. And the programme is an anthology of works by two 18th-century masters: the Italian Vivaldi, and the German Handel.

Here are arias from the operas of Handel's maturity which inflamed London with the voices of the most famous Italian castrati: Tamerlano (1724, Andrea Paccini), Tolomeo (1728, Senesino)... By Vivaldi, here are orchestral pieces to intersperse Handel's arias, taken from his famous violin concertos that were admired throughout Europe during the composer's lifetime. But Orlinski also performs aria from Vivaldi's opera Il Giustino: it was first performed at the Carnival in Rome in 1724, but (since women could not sing in Rome) only with male performers, including seven castrati! (Handel used the same libretto for his own Giustino, premiered in London in 1737, with the castrato Gizziello in the title role).

There is no doubt that in this display of virtuosity and sensitivity, which were the two exceptional qualities of the castrati, Orliński is a master!