Other notable operas included Verdi's Ernani (WNO 1979, revised for ENO 2000), a Felliniesque Rise And Fall Of The City Of Mahagonny (Florence, 1990) and Macbeth at La Scala in 1997.Īfter her RSC debut with The Way Of The World (Judi Dench's Millamant kept suitors at bay with her frock's defensive train), Bjornson collaborated on several productions with director Ron Daniels. In the latter, the Valkyries rode through Brunnhilde's mausoleum amid spectacular concentric circles, as fire and Nuremberg-style uplighting pierced the air. Their jaunty Cunning Little Vixen (1980) still appears in London and Cardiff.Īlso with Pountney at ENO, she designed an electric Carmen (1986) set in an abandoned car lot, and The Valkyrie (1983) for an unfulfilled Ring cycle. Jagged shafts of lighting fell on the legal documents piled up for The Makropoulos Case in 1978. The river Volga menaced their claustrophobic Katya in 1979 - an expressionist silver swirl framing the characters and suggesting their tumultuous emotions. Their subsequent Janacek cycle for Scottish and Welsh National Operas was a towering achievement. In 1972, she and director David Pountney collaborated (again with Blane) on an uncluttered Katya Kabanova in Wexford.
She designed 13 productions there (several with fellow designer Sue Blane), specialising in Brecht. Maria went to the French Lycée in London and then studied at the Byam Shaw School of Art and the Central School of Art and Design.Īn early influence was Philip Prowse of the Glasgow Citizens' theatre, whose sense of lush austerity chimed with her own.
Although born in Paris, she grew up in London in some poverty while her mother, who had had polio, established herself, first as a cleaner and then working for the Romanian department in the BBC's World Service. Both her Norwegian father, whom she did not know until she reached adulthood, and her Romanian mother belonged to families who worked in the theatre.
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