by Montague Gammon III
A fast rising young Metropolitan Opera star-in-the-making mezzo who likes “once upon a time … happy ending” stories – Cinderella (La Cenerentola, Rossini) is the role Ginger Costa-Jackson most looks forward to playing some day – portrays the doomed title character of the Virginia Opera’s season closing Carmen.
It’s under the direction of veteran stagecraft artist Tazewell Thompson, whose Pearl Fishers in 2012 delighted VOA audiences.
He calls George Bizet’s final composition “the world’s most popular opera….You have so many wonderful projects that came out of Carmen. There was an episode of the Simpsons and Beyonce was in the hip-hop Carmen. And then there was the Rita Hayworth movie ‘The Loves of Carmen.’ You can hear Carmen in the elevator, on muzak …”
It’s the tale of a hard living gypsy girl with life experiences far beyond her years – Costa-Jackson sees her as 17-18 years old – whose mutual passion for soldier Don José leads to what many people would consider a tragic conclusion, though Costa-Jackson does not.
The production’s costumes, by Merrily Murray-Walsh, place events in the 1950s, but the literal, and very realistic setting is that of an unchanging Seville, says the director.
Thompson has unstinting praise for his performers, and for conductor John DeMain. “Brilliant principals … great young cast …. good looking cast … wonderful, young, vibrant … if there is a perfect conductor [for Carmen] it’s John DeMain. He knows and loves this opera.” (DeMain also conducted the VOA’s 2011 Aida.)
The story is every bit as timeless as a city where, in Thompson’s words, “The cafes, the back alleys never change – Seville never changes.”
Costa-Jackson’s relies on French author Prosper Mérimée’s original 1845 novella of the same name for details of her character’s life before the events of the 1875 opera. She supplements those details with her own actor’s imagination.
In a backstage conversation between rehearsals, she showed little interest in talking about how online commentary seemed to hail her as the next Renée Fleming, the exceptional up and coming singer to watch (or to hear).
On the other hand, this highly praised member of the Met’s exclusive Lindeman Young Artist Development Program was more than eager to talk about the woman she was playing, especially when the idea was introduced that Carmen was a victim of abuse.
Costa-Jackson agrees.
Not only is Don José a stalker, but he is abusive, she says, as is the husband whom the novella gives Carmen, but who does not figure in the opera.
Costa-Jackson sees Carmen as a girl who was taken as a lover, perhaps forcibly, perhaps as young as 12 by the much older leader of her gypsy band, and ”married at 13” to the same man. He beats her, and she serves with other gypsy women as a prostitute to distract guards so their men can go about their smuggling business.
Carmen’s promiscuity is not for pleasure, but a necessary task for economic survival, “a tool,” says the actress. “Of course she drinks and carouses when she has money… This is how you make a living; this is how you treat the world. If you have money use it…She lives for instant gratification because she has no realistic hope for anything else.”
“Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die,” is how Costa-Jackson describes Carmen’s view.
Enter Don José – Catholic, with a rank in the army and from a good family – who seems so different from “the men she sleeps around with who do not care.”
Perhaps she can have the “house and children and white picket fence” of settled society.
“Carmen is a strong woman but she’s also vulnerable. There’s a moment in Act 2,” says Costa-Jackson, when the hard-bitten gypsy girl tells Don José, “‘You will put me on your white steed and gallop away.’ If that’s not something that a 16 year old girl would say …”
But when an angry Don José chokes her, Carmen realizes her knight is all too errant. “She’s had enough of that [physical abuse] from her old husband….She’s not going to let anyone control her.”
Carmen thinks she sees her own impending death in the Tarot cards, but, as Thompson pointed out to his cast, one is not supposed to read the cards for oneself. A disinterested party should read them or one’s own emotions can lead one to misunderstand what the cards foretell.
The card that is Death, Costa-Jackson explains, can mean only a change. Carmen, now convinced that her love for Don José has no real future, interprets the card literally, readily believing that “she has read her fate in the cards.”
The “hormonal cocktail” that first drew them into one another’s lives “wears off” and “you get that perfect storm” of violent emotions, “because you have that chemistry, and Don Jose is wound up too tight,” so when he snaps, he goes off the deep end.
Carmen, ever the opposite, the free spirit, realizes that “There’s no way he can fit into my world, and I cannot fit into his world.”
With that perception she loses hope, and decides “Let it be – I’m done. I’m fine to let life go.”
(Imminent spoiler alert!)
Costa-Jackson does not see Carmen’s death at Don José’s hands as a tragedy because “in dying she has a better afterlife.”
The VOA Carmen, she promises, will be “more of a Broadway show. There’s lots of momentum, lots of dancing. It’s physically active.”
She compares it to the beloved and sentimental show Carousel. “If you like the one you will like the other.”
The classic opera Carmen, its leading lady points out, is really “musical theatre, it’s just in a different language.”
Carmen by Georges Bizet
Libretto by Ludovic Halévy and Henri Meilhac
Virginia Opera Association
March 21, 23, 25: Harrison Opera House, Norfolk
March 28, 29; Sandler Center, Virginia Beach
757-623-1223
www.vaopera.org
Other performances in Richmond and Fairfax.