“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. When 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. “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.
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