![]() I’m sure if Maria were still alive today she’d still be improving the show because she was just that kind of person. “Over time, we have done five different sculpts for the phantom mask itself because she kept wanting it to be more interesting. “She was interested in developing the show,” says Associate Costume Designer Sam Fleming. ![]() Despite variations and evolutions, every costume piece worn in Phantom today originated in Björnson’s design. Her designs were extravagant and yet simultaneously unsettling, as she perfected a unique idiom of romantic expressionism. When Björnson died suddenly at the age of 53, she was at the center of revelatory transformations in opera production. THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA COSTUME FULLWhen Lloyd Webber introduced the musical to friends at his country home, Bjornson prepared a chandelier to plunge over the audience, a rousing effect that also appeared in the full production. Matt Wolf in London contributed to this report.“We used drapes swagging downwards and upwards,” Björnson once wrote, “dark Turkish corners leading off to nowhere, and candles rising out of the floor through mist.” Inspired by the subterranean glamour of Paris, she imagined a misty underground lake and studded the proscenium with gilded figures. It's just that the design is so brilliant that it works right through." A lot of 'Phantom' is extraordinarily simple. "People talk about it being very spectacular," he says, "but most everything in the production is done with an extraordinary lack of technology. "The reason why of all my shows 'Phantom' has endured so long is that it requires the scale and beauty of the visual to pull you in." Lloyd Webber, too, acknowledges "Phantom's" debt to Bjornson, saying, "She brought femininity to it." And the composer disagrees with those who attribute the show's visual success to excess. Producer Cameron Mackintosh had seen Bjornson's work in the opera house, but it wasn't grandeur that impressed him most when it came to picking a designer for "Phantom." "She was able to create a real world I could believe in," he says. "It's not often fashionable now to desire something to be drop-dead gorgeous," says Zambello, "but that's what she was dedicated to." The director describes Bjornson as "a consummate storyteller who was never afraid of great beauty," dubbing the designer "traditionalist and conservative" in the aesthetic sense. "There are some designers who will not spend hours in the paint and costume shops, but Maria would not leave people alone until everything was right." 18, 2023, a message on the shows website reads. ![]() ![]() The longest-running musical in Broadways history, a feat it achieved in 2006, will play its final performance at the Majestic Theatre on Saturday, Feb. "She was relentless in getting it right," Zambello recalls. The chandelier will fall for the last time on Andrew Lloyd Webbers 'The Phantom of the Opera' next year. Well received at its premiere in Houston in 2003 and in New York last year, the opera was especially lauded for Bjornson's whimsical set and costume designs - a world away from what she had wrought for "Phantom."įrancesa Zambello, who first worked with Bjornson at London's Covent Garden in 1999, directed that production and says that although the designer didn't live to see her work executed, she had built all the set models and painted the costumes designs. Half Face Masquerade Mask Halloween Costume Phantom Of The Opera Mask for Men and Women. At the time, she was working on the inaugural production of Rachel Portman's opera "The Little Prince," based on the beloved book by Saint-Exupery. The Phantom of the Opera Christine Daae Costume Tutorial 2. The tragedy is that her credit list, though substantial, would be larger still had she not died in 2002 of natural causes at the unnaturally early age of 53. Above, Bjomsons illustration for "Hannibal," the opera within the opera known as "Phantom."ījornson's list of credits may always be headed by "Phantom," but her work in theater was varied and, ironically, includes far more operas and plays than musicals. Her illustrious career was cut short in 2002 when she died at age 53. LOOK OF LOVE: Maria Bjornson designed the sets and costumes for "The Phantom of the Opera," her first of only three Broadway credits. ![]()
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