(Credit: Georges Biard)

Costume Designer Christian Gasc has passed at age 76.

Born on August 6, 1945 in Dunes, France, Gasc’s passion for cinema came from his mother. He moved to Paris at age 19 to pursue a career in cinema and started his career by working on Liliane de Kermadec’s “Aloïse.”

From there he would go on to work with a wide range of major filmmakers including François Truffaut, Claire Denis, Benoît Jacquot, Pierre Romans, Jean-François Adam, Jean-Luc Godard, and Jeanne Moreau, among many others.

In the opera world he was renowned for his work in Milan, Geneva, Paris, London, Monte-Carlo, designing costumes for such opera stars as Anna Netrebko, Renée Fleming, Anne-Sophie Von Otter, Ruggiero Raimondi, and Angela Gheorghiu, among many others.

“I am deeply saddened by the passing of extraordinary, unsurpassed costume designer, my dearest friend Christian Gasc, with whom I had a very close friendship and correspondence until his end. A generous man of culture and of great finesse,” Gheorghiu stated on social media regarding the passing of the French legend.

His last opera production was the Opéra de Paris’ “Traviata” production from 2014, directed by Jacquot.