name: carlotta giudicelli
age: thirty
gender and pronouns: trans female, she/her
loyalty: neutral
occupation: company member of le théâtre de nuit
criminal occupation: none
faceclaim: laverne cox
You were born with moonlight in your throat, comets scorching through your veins and stars rolling off of your back. There was a name before Carlotta, a story that came before the one you tell to strangers in dimly lit spaces, but the prologue is not what is remembered. The chapters of your existence are written across your limbs with pride, an open book for all who wish to read it, and you know no shame or fear. Your body has always contained too much for the stretch of your skin and the length of your bones, and your father promised you that you were destined for greatness — ‘Sing, Carlotta. Let your voice fly, uccellino. Don’t stop until you’ve found it.’ Exactly what he meant, you had never asked, but you still searched for it. You grew your hair out to lasso towers that were out of reach, filing your nails into points that made no surface safe from your ascent. You were a born climber, but you were also a mountain in your own right, and your father had always known that his investments into your future would pay off tenfold. Etiquette lessons had the social ladder of your Italian hometown beneath your heels, and lessons with an aged opera singer out of her prime trained you to reach notes that were higher than the heavens. ‘What is it like, Carlotta?’ your father would whisper, taking you by his calloused hands and smiling until his lips cracked from the strain. ‘When you go to heaven in those moments, what’s it like? What do you see? What secrets do you know?’ And he died knowing you would become a legend, and you held his hand knowing he gave up everything to see it become a possibility. You didn’t know what was beyond the golden gates that you visited in the moments of your performances, but you kept visiting them — you kept singing and you kept reaching and you kept trying to see those shining streets; but your father was gone in a casket lined with velvet. Ivory finishing held the tears that you could not carry on your own. You dreamt of Paris in your mourning, all the stories he’d tell you of his younger years when there were no anchors to strip a father of his youth. You packed your things and you made the journey on a whim. To find yourself and to cement your goals, or to reconnect with the man that made you who you were, you were not entirely sure. It’s a cruel tragedy when a girl never knows love truer than the man who spoiled her until there was nothing but rot left beneath her skin.
Parisian silks around your throat and shades to block out the flames of your ambitions, you were offered residence in Le Théâtre de Nuit within a week of your arrival. Extravagance went a long way for making your presence known — the flamboyance of your laughter drowning out dimmer women before singing could even come up in the auditions. They needed someone to draw in a crowd, someone to hook all eyes on the stage in the moment of her voice rising in octave, and that was destined to be you. The next week, you had your first starring role, and after the best opening of a play in the theatre’s history, it became an annual thing. You’d take your breaks, and you’d let your understudies have their own moments in the public eye, but you were a greedy thing. You latched your claws into Nuit and you claimed it as your own — and who was to challenge a dragon’s claim to her hoard? You were the pearl atop a pile of cracked shells, a beautiful thing among so much tragedy, and your life was perfect. You were everything your father had wanted you to be; you were the leading woman. You met a man who loved you for all the plainness beneath your gilded surface, and the two of you were happy. Romeo and Juliet, Marc Antony and Cleopatra — Carlotta and Piangi. The king and queen of the opera, and isn’t it tragic? That royalty is always destined to fall? Whereas skill could not be questioned, there were prettier women, and you knew the curse of being a dim creature waltzing across a sky of burning stars. You were once the sun, a shining thing that could not be threatened, but the the standing of Nuit began to change the moment Christine Daae placed herself on the chessboard. Parts reserved for you are offered to her, dresses you made famous altered to better suit her figure, and all the while you're left staring at lights that are slowly slipping away. They linger on her, making her shine in all the ways that made you whole, and it's not fair. There is nothing warm and beautiful about a fleeting sense of worth. Is this your swan song? Is this the moment you become a supernova? A dead, lovely thing in galaxy of fallen heroes? You were always meant to be eternal, always meant to have everything your heart desired. Piangi can't chase the ghosts away, and your father's too far past the gates to call for him. Keep singing, Carlotta. You have so much more to say. An empty theatre still has an audience — sing for the broken people. For once, sing for yourself.
castmates: baylen moreau, fleur renard, meg giry, odessa faust, sebastian renard, and ursula braun
enemies: erik destler and joseph buquet
employers: gabriel prideaux, madalene giry, michel lefevre, and richard firmin
CHRISTINE DAAE
You’re an aged bird, sitting on a swing in a cage of ivory — and now a younger creature has come to perch on the branches of your treasured domain. It’s almost blasphemous, the way that the audience eats out of her palms and how the theatre is placing the spotlight on her form. Her talent holds no match to yours, her abilities not nearly as trained as your own, and it’s unfair that time is such a cruel mistress. You punch vanity mirrors until the lines on the glass match the ones on your face, and you curse fate. Your father sacrificed everything to see you become something; wiser and happier and more secure than he had been. How dare a child attempt to usurp his legacy? How dare a swan pretend to know the song of a lark? Beauty is fleeting, you know that now. Your voice cements you in a way that she cannot budge — but what will hold her? Frankly, Christine’s just a pretty face, and you’re content to weather the storm until she’s no longer an annoyance.
MATHIEU REYER AND GILLE ANDRE
Either you or they are little more than a spoiled pet, and it’s never been likely for you to play a role without proper credit. Every whim of yours is met within a matter of seconds; every little frustrated cry for help and craving for a display of opulence. The prized lark is kept preened and fed and adored at all times, and the two of them have always been tasked with calming your tantrums. A secondary character stands a little too close, and you storm off. Another woman tries to sing more passionately than her part requires, and you throw your hands up in protest. And can you blame them for trying so hard to please you? ‘Don’t cry, Carlotta,’ they beg, wiping tears from your cheeks and powdering away the flush of red. ‘Don’t strain your voice!’ And you lick the salt from your lips and bat your eyelashes, and you say that you’ll be fine. When everything is as you want it to be, all is perfect within Nuit. You've never been one for giving up control.
UBALDO PIANGI
You found a man to hold you while strolling the cold streets of Italy. You were a woman in your prime and a rising star in the opera scene, and when you visited your home country in the winter months, Piangi pulled you close and gave you a warmth that you had always craved. Awe of him came after loving him, learning of his local operatic roots as a tenor of great skill. You snatched him away like a thief in the night, taking him to Paris where the two of you steadily started your ascent to the very top of Nuit’s rankings. You were the star, the grandest of all the performers, and he had a voice like warm honey. You drank of him, and he tasted of you, but what the two of you shared was the purest of relationships. How powerful is love? When someone manages to steal your heart with just a simple kiss to your cheek, no nails trailing down your back? You married him, and you forged a life with him, and now he combs your hair as your relevance slowly fades away. ‘And do you still love me?’ you whisper often, forehead pressed against his own. 'Always,’ he assures.
THIS CHARACTER HAS A FLEXIBLE FACECLAIM AND IS OPEN