By Teresa Annas
The Virginian-Pilot
©March 20, 2014
Hour after hour, Jennifer Noe trained her eyes on the hem of a dress soon to be in lights.
Last week, her slender hands – with surprisingly long nails, given her work – straight-pinned a jet-and-silver-scalloped hem to the lacy outer skirt of Carmen’s all-important Act 4 gown.
“This hem is 6 yards in circumference,” she said, stressing the word yards. “And it’s three layers. I have 18 yards of hemming to do right here.”
That’s a lot of twirling power for a seductive gypsy, and a lot of labor for Noe. Her efforts will be seen in Virginia Opera’s production of Georges Bizet’s “Carmen,” opening Friday at the Harrison Opera House in Norfolk.
“Carmen,” often called the most popular opera, is about a beautiful gypsy who seduces a good man, then proceeds to ruin his life and hers. Bizet wrote it in the 1870s, and many Carmens since the premiere have had a classic gypsy look: black mantilla set in a wild mane. A long, full skirt. Lots of red, to convey her hot-blooded nature.
Virginia Opera’s latest “Carmen” will look different, as it will be set in the 1950s – an era of leather jackets and form-fitting women’s wear.
As the deadline neared and the pressure kicked up, a darkly comic tone kicked in at Noe’s little corner of the Opera’s costume shop.
Back to that Act 4 gown.
“Every opera singer who puts on a gown immediately wants to wallow on the floor,” Noe said, eyes never leaving her hemming job.
“That’s a joke, but it is true. The singers do put on beautiful clothes to go do what people normally don’t do in beautiful clothes.”
The tenors and sopranos don’t run outside and make mudpies. They’re on stage, behaving how directors want them to. They might be fighting, making mad love or falling into bushes.
For Noe, observing dress rehearsals is a hands-over-face ordeal. She’s thinking to herself, “Please don’t rip. Please don’t snag.”
Last Thursday, she was four days from the first dress rehearsal. At that event, nationally noted stage director Tazewell Thompson would be focused on acting, and Tony- and Grammy-winning conductor John DeMain would be focused on the nuances of the music.
Noe would be staring at hems.
“That’s pretty much what I do. Look at the hem. And the likelihood of it being even and not having to be straightened after dress rehearsal is,” she pauses, “minimal.”
Noe is the costume shop’s draper, a job she’s held for about 14 seasons with the Virginia Opera.
“I make the patterns for everything we make.” Noe’s explanation of her process, using the Act 4 gown as example, makes it clear just how hand-built a Virginia Opera production is.
Noe began by making a mock-up in muslin of a dress pattern she created based on costume designer Merrily Murray-Walsh’s ideas and the singer’s dimensions.
Then she put the mock-up on the singer, with Murray-Walsh present, so they could tweak the dress’s shape and details.
That fitting took place just over three weeks ago. “We tinkered a little with the waistline,” she said.
Next she took the mock-up apart and created the final pattern pieces, and used those to cut out fabrics for all three layers. “That’s a lot of cutting. Took me two to three days. It’s like making three dresses.”
From bare skin out, Ginger Costa-Jackson, the Italian mezzo-soprano in the title role, will be wearing an “all-in-one” – “essentially a girdle and bra in one” – a stiff, black petticoat, a purple silk taffeta skirt and a purple organdy skirt, topped with the black-and-silver lace skirt that Noe was hemming.
Ten days ago Noe tried the dress on Costa-Jackson. “It did really well,” Noe recalled, shifting the skirt on her work table.
“There were a few tweaks. Always, when you go into the real fabric, it behaves a little bit differently than the mock-up fabric.” The final material may have a little more give or it may be thicker and take up more room, so it has to be adjusted.
“And now I’m finishing it. And I’ve been finishing it for what seems like an eternity now.”
Pat Seyller, costume shop manager, said this production of “Carmen” features 67 performers, and most get at least one change of clothes.
However, not every outfit is made in the shop. A lot of the costumes are crafted from bits and pieces that are found, sometimes in the oddest places.
During Act 3, when chorus members are in the mountains hiding out with Carmen and her fellow smugglers, they will wear old leather jackets that Seyller and Murray-Walsh found at the Rose Bowl flea market in Pasadena- for 10 bucks apiece.
The Opera also bought 1950s pointy cotton bras from the costumer for AMC’s “Mad Men.”
Seyller indicated a long, narrow hallway with costumes running its length, marked for each performer. In an adjacent room were 10 clothing racks and several tables packed with 1950s hats, purses and clothing that might still prove useful.
You won’t see any red in Carmen’s clothes, because Murray-Walsh sees that as a cliche.
You won’t see any poodle skirts, either, because those weren’t in Spain in that era.
The opera takes place in Seville, and that city hasn’t changed much over the years, Murray-Walsh said. She’s worked there, and seen all those old buildings firsthand.
The 1950s clothing works with this opera’s seductive undertone because women’s clothing then was figure-flattering and feminine. “There’s a waistline, and you see the bust,” Murray-Walsh said.
Carmen’s outfits start out lighter. In Act 1, she wears a cheerful apricot blouse and a skirt with orange polka dots. With each ensuing act, more black is added.
By Act 4, her purple underskirts are heavily veiled in black. She’s gone from a rough-hewn gypsy to the sophisticated-looking girlfriend of a famous matador.
Before then, she dragged a naive soldier into her lair, grew bored and discarded him. You get the idea she’s done this before.
She encounters this spurned Don Jose at opera’s end outside the bullring, where her matador is inside entrancing audiences in his cobalt toreador suit with gold hand-embroidery, made by a Los Angeles costumer. Such garb, known as a “suit of light,” is a matador’s way of getting dressed to kill.
Carmen looks stunning next to him in her purple. It’s her dress to die for.
Murray-Walsh agrees with Noe’s assertion that the Act 4 gown is Carmen’s most important costume. “We all know she’s going to die.
It makes it even more pungent to me that she is so gorgeous at the end.”
Teresa Annas, 757-446-2485,teresa.annas@pilotonline.com
__
If you go
What Georges Bizet’s opera “Carmen,” produced by Virginia Opera, with the Richmond Symphony conducted by John DeMain
When and where 8 p.m. Friday, 2:30 p.m. Sunday and 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at Harrison Opera House, 160 E. Virginia Beach Blvd., Norfolk; 8 p.m. March 28 and 2:30 p.m. March 29 at the Sandler Center for the Performing Arts, 201 Market St., Virginia Beach
Cost $19 to $114
Contact 866-673-7282, www.vaopera.org