About
Claudie Gastine, born March 24, 1941 in Marseille, is a decorator-scenographer and French costume designer.
Formed by Suzanne Lalique and especially by Lila De Nobili, Lydia and Stiva Doboujinsky, she participates since 1963 in the adventure of The Theatrical Community, founded by Raymond Rouleau and soon begins to practice his profession mainly in France and Italy. His career is divided between theater, opera and ballet. From the end of the 1960s, she collaborated with Alfredo Arias, Rudolf Nureyev, Gian Carlo Menotti, Francis Huster, Nicolas Joel and Jean-Marie Simon. Often in Italy for opera costumes, she broadens her field of action to many European theaters. She has also created costumes for film and television. A time Professor at the National Theater School of Strasbourg, she is also an exhibition designer. She is the wife, since 1968, of the musician and composer Michel Sanvoisin of which she has two daughters.
Training and first achievements
She studied until the Bachelor of Philosophy in a Marseille boarding school. In 1955 one of her great-aunts Jeanne Pons, painter (Marseille 1874-1959), encouraged her to learn drawing. She enrolled in evening classes at the Beaux-Arts in Marseille. In 1959 she came to Paris and took decoration classes in a workshop in Montparnasse. Admitted to the Center of the Rue Blanche (future ENSATT), in decoration section, promotion 1960/1961, his career will begin thanks to Suzanne Lalique, director of decoration at the Comédie-Française and honorary professor at the École de la rue Blanche , who, in the spring of 1961, is preparing an exhibition of the Comédie-Française at Versailles and recruits among the students, decorators to reconstruct models built to be exhibited there. Claudie Gastine will be part of this team.
In 1963, she joined The Theatrical Community, a kind of theater-school created by Raymond Rouleau, where personalities like Tania Balachova, Lila De Nobili and Raymond Rouleau bring their experience to young actors, directors, or decorators. Shows are mounted in a small room on rue Mouffetard or in Parisian theaters. Later, will be built the theater of the Sword of wood, at the corner of the street of the same name and rue Mouffetard. She is involved in several shows: The Rose and the Black piece in 1 act at Théâtre Montparnasse in 1963, The Dream of Strindberg, directed by Ram Goffer at Théâtre Mouffetard in 1964 and Our small town of Thornton Wilder, directed by Raymond Roller at the Théâtre de l'épée de bois in 1965, which will be her first creation of both sets and costumes. She will continue with Les Eaux de Merlin, Opéra de la Foire, trestle show at Les Baux de Provence, staged Jean-Louis Thamin, musicians and singers under the direction of Michel Sanvoisin, in 1966.
Diversification of his career
From 1963 to 1967, she alternated the creations at the Mouffetard Theater and the work with Lydia and Stiva Doboujinsky, decorators of the great Russian tradition, and assisted Lila De Nobili and Jean Marie Simon in France and Italy. In 1967 she participated in the lyric creation at the festival of Spoleto in Italy Il furioso all'isola di San Domingo by Gaetano Donizetti directed by Gian Carlo Menotti. The decorator is Renzo Mongiardino; she is in charge of costume design. Subsequently, Gian Carlo Menotti will appeal to this same team of decoration. Then, Rudolf Nureyev, who was called to choreograph Tchaikovsky's ballet Nutcracker in Stockholm, asked Mongiardino to set the scene. She will be in charge of ballet costumes, Rostislav Dobuzinsky masks and fantastic characters.
New experience in December 1970, with the creation of Galeries Lafayette's Christmas windows in collaboration with Rostislav Doboujinsky, on the theme of Public and private life of animals, Granville (From there will come later the idea of the creation of Peines de heart of an English cat). In June 1974 he created costumes for Puccini's La Bohème at the Teatro del Giglio in Lucca for Jean Marie Simon's first lyric production. It was the same year that she met Alfredo Arias and the band Tse, through Lila De Nobili and began their collaboration with Emilio Carcano for the sets. From the 1970s until 1990, she collaborated mainly with these two directors, Jean-Marie Simon for the Opera, Alfredo Arias for the theater.