A great artist has passed away.
Christian Gasc, French costume designer and recipient of four Césars and a Molière, who worked for cinema, opera and theater, died at the age of 76, AFP learned on Friday from his curator.
His body was discovered Tuesday evening at his Parisian home, said this source.
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He designed costumes for 50 films, winning three consecutive Césars in the 1990s for
Madame Butterfly
(an adaptation of Puccini's opera by Frédéric Mitterrand),
Ridicule
, by Patrice Leconte set at the court of Versailles, and
Le Bossu
, a cape and dagger film by Philippe de Broca. He received a fourth César for
Farewell to the Queen
released in 2012, a historical drama around the character of Marie-Antoinette played by Diane Kruger, written and directed by Benoît Jacquot. It is with this director and director that he conceives some of his most beautiful creations for the opera:
Werther
by Massenet given in 2010 and
La Traviata
by Giuseppe Verdi in 2014 at the Paris Opera.
“An extraordinary costume designer with unrivaled talent”
Angela Gheorghiu, Romanian soprano
Several lyrical stars were full of praise for him when his death was announced.
“
I liked Christian Gasc.
The man, the magnificent, the angel. (...) I loved his gaze which saw you more beautiful than you are, and which by a marvelous talent still embellished you”
, tweeted the French baritone Ludovic Tézier.
Soprano Angela Gheorghiu said she was also deeply saddened by the death of the designer whom she described in a tweet as an "
extraordinary and unparalleled talented
" costume designer .
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Born in Dunes in Tarn-et-Garonne into a modest family, he was raised by a mechanic father and a seamstress mother who gave him a taste for cinema from an early age.
At 19, he moved to Paris, where he met Liliane de Kermadec, who offered him to work on the costumes for her film
Aloïse
released in 1975, played by Isabelle Huppert and Delphine Seyrig.
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From then on he would collaborate with Jeanne Moreau for his film
Lumière
, François Truffaut for
La Chambre verte
and Jean-Luc Godard for
Passion
.
He will be just as prolific in the theater, with around fifty collaborations, including Catherine Hiegel for her production of
L'Avare
de Molière at the Comédie-Française in 2009. In 2003, he received the Molière award for costume designer for
L'Éventail de Lady Windermere
by Oscar Wilde, at the Théâtre du Palais Royal in Paris.