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Kristian Fredrikson (1940 - November 10, 2005) was a New Zealand-born Australian stage and costume designer working in ballet, opera and other performing arts. His work was acclaimed for its sumptuous, jewel-like quality, and a sensuous level of detail.

Fredrikson was born in Wellington as Kristian Adrian Sams, the son of a Danish merchant seaman and an Englishwoman. He began his career as a newspaper critic and journalist before studying art. His first stage design was for The Wintergarden in 1963. He had a long association with the Royal New Zealand Ballet, the Australian Ballet and Opera Australia. He designed operas including Lucrezia Borgia with Dame Joan Sutherland. He also worked on the Sydney Olympics opening ceremony.

In 2005 he realised a long-held ambition to design all three of Peter Tchaikovsky's ballets. He designed The Nutcracker for the Royal New Zealand Ballet, Swan Lake for the Houston Ballet, and The Sleeping Beauty for the Australian Ballet. The last-named was the Australian Ballet's largest ever production, requiring 300 costumes and four major sets, and was still touring at the time of Fredrikson's death.

Fredrikson died in Sydney at about age 65 of lung failure, following complications of pneumonia. He was intensely private, and never revealed his age.

Personality

A solitary figure, who spent the last years living alone in a small dark flat in Kings Cross, Sydney, Fredrikson felt he had been a 'goth' long before they were fashionable. As a child, he and his mother had been physically attacked in Christchurch for being Catholics in a Protestant area, and the experience had contributed to his feelings of alienation from mainstream society.

His aesthetic sense was cultivated at school by two nuns. The mother superior gave him, he said, a "sexy, sensual, erotic, decadent book about the pleasure of the flesh, the pleasure of colour, of jewels, of life. She gave it all to me and said 'You can read that, but don't tell anyone."

Fredrikson said his art work had "grown out of my most private sexual being. Translated, I suppose that means that's how I ran into Tchaikovsky." His deep love for the music of Tchaikovsky coloured his life. Dame Peggy van Praagh who commissioned his first design for the Australian Ballet told him he had to spend a weekend with an older male designer who lived in Sydney's Blue Mountains. Fredrikson said she told him: "The first thing is, he'll throw you on the carpet and rape you." He did, and he believed it was "all part of the deal. It seemed to be like part of the Mephistophelean code. That's what you do."

Notes

1,2,3: Sydney Morning Herald, 19 November 2005: Kristian Fredrikson, Designer, 1940-2005

Reference

• Rosalie Higson. The stage mourns a shy genius, The Australian, November 12, 2005

• 2005 deaths
• New Zealand artists