Jan Mieczysław Reszke was born into comfortable circumstances in Warsaw, Congress Poland, in 1850. Both his parents were Poles; his father was a state official and his mother a capable amateur singer, their house being a recognized musical centre. Reszke sang as a boy in Warsaw Cathedral and later studied law at the city's university, but after a few years he abandoned his legal schooling to study at the Warsaw Conservatory with the Italian tenor Francesco Ciaffei, who trained him as a baritone. When he was 19, Reszke and his father visited Italy. In Venice he attended a performance in which the Italian baritone Antonio Cotogni sang. Cotogni's singing made such a profound impression on him that the young Reszke followed him for the next five years wherever he performed, including to London and Saint Petersburg. During that time he was under Cotogni's tutelage, also as a baritone.