Sofia Coppola’s La traviata set to rescue Rome opera house

The 136-year-old Rome landmark is on the verge of a remarkable U-turn with a help of Hollywood stardust.

Sofia Coppola arrives for the premiere of La Traviata at the Rome opera house on Sunday. Picture: AP

Hollywood stardust has helped to turn round the fortunes of Rome’s 136-year-old opera house.

The film director Sofia Coppola is directing a production of La traviata, which opens this week, with sets by the designer of the Dark Knight films. The production has broken box office records, with €1.2 million ($1.85m) in advance ticket sales.

It is a remarkable U-turn for the venue, which was wallowing in debts of €40m two years ago and dismissed nearly 200 members of its orchestra and chorus after frequent strikes by pampered musicians prompted the departure of its respected honorary director Riccardo Muti.

General manager Carlo Fuortes asked the Italian fashion designer, and opera fan, Valentino Garavani, 84, to come out of retirement to create the costumes for La traviata. He took just 90 minutes to design four gowns for the opera’s protagonist, Violetta. “Opera has become second division,” Garavani says, “but there is a romantic atmosphere missing from rock concerts.”

He recommended Coppola to direct the opera after watching her 2006 film Marie Antoinette. She in turn hired Nathan Crowley, the British set designer who reinvented Gotham City for the Dark Knight films and designed spaceships for Interstellar.

Coppola, 45, who is directing her first opera, says she had a masterclass from her great-uncle, Anton Coppola, 99, who conducted La traviata for the New York City Opera in the 1960s. “He was a big help to me,” she says. “He took me through it, explained the story, talked about where you can and can’t make cuts, and we talked a lot about tempo.”

The Oscar-winning daughter of film director Francis Ford Coppola, says that working in opera was “scary and very unfamiliar”, adding: “I work with subtlety and details and opera is so big and melodramatic — so it was challenging and I am learning as I go.”

Working in her favour was the rich musical heritage of her Italian-American family, including links to Muti “My dad proudly told me I was a distant cousin of Muti’s,” she says.

Her grandfather Carmine Coppola won an Oscar in 1975 for the score of The Godfather: Part II. Carmine’s brother, Anton, became a conductor, a role he played in The Godfather: Part III.

Anton Coppola recalls of Sofia: “For years, my wife and I would see her at family gatherings, a sweet little thing sucking her thumb in the corner. Obviously, she was observing a lot.”

The Times