Swedish designer, director, and librettist Mathias Clason has passed away after a long battle with an undisclosed illness.

Born in Stockholm on July 30, 1963, Clason began his career in the arts at the age of 20, designing costumes before going on to stage design. Over the next 37 years, Clason went on to work on over 100 opera, ballet, theater, and musical productions in Sweden and abroad. Among his acclaimed worked includes “Marie Antoinette” with the Folk Opera, “Lucia di Lammermoor” with Malmo Opera,” and Wagner’s The Ring Cycle at Dalhalla. His costume work on the 2005 production of “Beauty and the Beast” at the Göta Lejon won Clason the Golden Mask award of Stockholm.

Clason was active as an educator as well as a librettist and playwright, writing works such as “Jenny Lind,” “An Iceberg in the Mediterranean,” and Karlsson on the Roof,” among others.

The Folk Opera company issued a statement on Clason’s death via social media, saying, “The folk opera remembers the stage artist Mathias Clason who has sadly left us. We remember a great personality that created imaginative, grand, and always surprising suits for some performances that became something special at the Folkopera. He was there from the beginning of ‘Hornsgatan’ with, among other things, ‘Trollflute,’ ‘Tales of Hoffman,’ and not least in ‘Marie Antoinette.’”