Maria Bjornson, 53; Designed Sets, Costumes for ‘Phantom of Opera’

Maria Bjornson, 53, a set and costume designer who won the loudest raves of her career for her work on the hit musical “The Phantom of the Opera,” has died.

She was found dead at her London home Friday, London newspapers reported. No cause of death was given.

Bjornson won two Tonys -- for set and costume design -- for “Phantom,” the dazzling Andrew Lloyd Webber musical about a disfigured man who haunts the Paris Opera House. Bjornson, who was known for her work with the Royal Shakespeare Company, had never worked on a musical before collaborating with director Hal Prince on the Webber production.

Her designs were widely regarded as being central to the success of “Phantom,” which debuted in London in 1986 and went on to a long run in New York, Los Angeles and other U.S. cities. She created 57 effects, including a candlelit lake, an elevating lair and a “magic” see-through mirror through which heroine Christine first glimpses her hypnotic masked suitor.

Before designing the sets, she spent hours exploring and photographing from top to bottom the Paris Opera House, where Gaston Leroux’s novel (and basis of the Webber musical) was set.

Her voluminous research combined with an exhaustive imagination to produce costumes such as that worn by the Phantom, which was her favorite. The half-mask that was his trademark was suggested to Bjornson by the visors worn by some blinded, disfigured soldiers after World War I.

Born in Paris to parents of Norwegian and Romanian heritage, she moved with her family to England as a baby. A painter who saw her drawings when she was 12 suggested that she study theatrical design. She was barely 16 when she took her first courses in the field at the Glen Byam Shaw School in London. She later studied at the Central School of Art and Design.