Christian Gasc, costume designer for the four Césars, dies at 76

DISAPPEARANCE – Found lifeless at his Parisian home on Tuesday, he had worked on period films like Madame Butterfly, Ridicule, Le Bossu and Farewell to the Queen.

A great artist has passed away. Christian Gasc, French costume designer recipient of four Caesars and a Molière, who has worked for cinema, opera and theater, died at the age of 76, AFP learned from his curator on Friday. His body was discovered Tuesday evening at his Parisian home, said this source.

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 located at the court of Versailles, and Le Bossu, a cape and dagger film by Philippe de Broca. He receives 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 of Massenet given in 2010 and The Traviata by Giuseppe Verdi in 2014 at the Paris Opera.

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 adored his gaze which saw you more beautiful than you are, and which by a marvelous talent embellished you even more», French baritone Ludovic Tézier tweeted. Soprano Angela Gheorghiu said she was also deeply saddened by the death of the designer whom she described in a tweet as a costumer “extraordinary and of unparalleled talent».

Born in Dunes in the Tarn-et-Garonne in 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, interpreted by Isabelle Huppert and Delphine Seyrig.

He will therefore chain collaborations with Jeanne Moreau for his film Light, François Truffaut for The Green Room 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 The Miser by Molière at the Comédie-Française in 2009. He will receive in 2003 the Molière costume designer for Lady Windermere’s Fan by Oscar Wilde, at the Théâtre du Palais Royal in Paris.

By Editor

Leave a Reply