IT WAS MOLTO ITALIANO! Friends and family of Valentino – the man and thebrand – made an ultra-glamorous audience for La Traviata at the Teatrodell’Opera in Rome.

On stage there were costumes dramatic and tender, the fashion fruit ofValentino and the design duo that has followed him: Maria Grazia Chiuri andPierpaolo Piccioli.

In the audience there were floor-sweeping gowns, elegant dressesand various versions of the beaded patterns, like Pointillist paintings, fromthe Valentino African collection – as worn by Marie-Chantal, Crown Princess ofGreece. The necklace of the night, with some sparkling competition, was worn byMonica Bellucci, her jewels pouring down her cleavage, while matriarch CarlaFendi’s jewels glistened as she talked to a regal Lee Radziwill.

Add to the starry audience a nervous Francis Ford Coppola, who came toEurope to support his daughter Sofia, who has already followed in his giantfootsteps in the movie world and has now directed her first opera.

For Giancarlo Giammetti and Valentino Garavani, it had been a labour oflove to become producers and have Sofia as director to help the re-organisedRoman opera house. Their idea was to use the talent of the Valentino studio tocostume the characters in this dramatic, but much seen, opera by GiuseppeVerdi, first shown in Venice in 1853.

“It was my idea,” explained Giancarlo of the concept of persuading SofiaCoppola, 45, to look at the opera’s story line of tempestuous love from theperspective of her generation as a project for the Fondazione ValentinoGaravani.

More

Intervista con Alice Pagani di Baby

by Francesca Ferrante

What to Watch in December

by Italo Pantano

The stakes were high. Would 27-year-old soprano Francesca Dotto raiseher look as well as her powerful voice by wearing the Valentino costumes? Couldfashion creatives stitch-in the grandeur and pathos of the opera, even if theValentino couture house is the pride of Rome?

And, above all, would Sofia Coppola strike a balance between the strictsocial etiquette of the past and the outlook of a modern young woman (as seenin her 2006 film, Marie Antoinette) to make the story appealing to amillennial audience?

“Unfortunately, young people are not involved in opera today – they donot realise that they are missing something that can transport you to anotherworld,” said Valentino, as we sat alone in the plush velvet central box whilethe final touches were applied on the stage set.

Valentino talked about his excitement at the freshness that Sofia couldbring to the story. He also reminisced about his love for opera and ballet andthe night he was introduced to Princess Diana and Prince Charles at PlacidoDomingo’s The Barber of Seville in London. This current project, heclaimed, made him sing arias from La Traviata in the shower.

For Maria Grazia and Pierpaolo there was no Italian operatic heritage.“Honestly, we only started two years ago and have no great knowledge, but wealways had ideas about heroines in the operas,” Maria Grazia said. Her designpartner Pierpaolo added, “As an Italian I remember all the arias!”

“We started to approach the opera with Sofia thinking that it must becontemporary, and how this special Traviata would connect to a younggeneration,” Pierpaolo said, while Maria Grazia had feared at the beginningthat “opera would be dusty”.

So the big question for this production was whether Sofia could dustdown the story of high society in 19th-century Paris and drag itinto the 21st-century.

For her father, there was no question that his daughter had achieved hergoal. “I am so very proud,” he told me after the performance, still sitting inthe stalls as the elegant crowd moved on to the site of the ancient RomanAquarium, where a buffet dinner was served from tables overflowing with fruitand flowers.

What did I as a fashion editor, but in no way a professional judge of operaor film, make of the performance?

Sofia Coppola’s idea seemed to be to open up the stage and make itvisually dramatic – from the abstract installation of a grand staircase to thehigh society “Greek chorus” taking part in the tense relationship betweenVioletta, her protective Baron, her ardent admirer Alfredo and his strictfather.

I took a while to be convinced by the clothes – not least because theopening was a long and nerve-racking descent of the stairway by Violetta, madeall the more difficult to navigate with a hefty turquoise train.

Perhaps it is meant to be a reflection of the narrative that Violettacasts off her formal, grand gowns as the opera progresses, while she ends herbrief life with the silhouette of her body seen as a passing shadow through thesilken nightgown that Valentino said was his favourite piece. The filmy fabricembraces both the love of her life and the realisation of death.

At the centre of the stage and the story is the dress of the show: in Carmenred, draping the flesh as Violetta stands surrounded by high society alldressed in black. The chorus support was Sofia’s method of opening the stage ina cinematic way and making the audience feel that there was genuine engagementbetween all these characters, rather than a drama only between the protagonistsin this passionate and doomed love affair.

“Making that red dress was so easy – I don’t know why, but I just drewit like that,” said the designer, who was sitting with Giancarlo in thefirst-night audience with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, whose low-cut whiteVivienne Westwood dress threatened to burst open.

There are more fashion moments on stage, such as the scene after thecouple flees to Paris for the country, where Violetta wears a fluff of whiteorganza and Antonio Poli, as Alfredo, throws off a turquoise velvet jacket. Themaid wears a black velvet long sleeved gown, typical of Maria Grazia’s designsbut somewhat grand for a servant.

Apart from the dress with the train, the cast moves easily in theclothes. I might have appreciated some less literal touches or modern gestures,such as creating the strict father’s top hat in paper to suggest the fragilityof a society set on appearances. Or even going full-on modern with Violetta inthe country in a pair of jeans.

But this was Sofia’s story – not mine. I finished, like most of theaudience, in an ocean of tears. But I felt that to reach Valentino’s operaticstandards, my paper tissues should have been impeccably-ironed lacehandkerchieves.

La Traviata runs for 15performances from 24 May to 30 June 2016