US director Sofia Coppola is teaming up with the British designer behind the Batman trilogy for a new production of the Italian opera "La Traviata", with costumes by fashion king Valentino.

Coppola, who won an Academy award for "Lost in Translation", is putting on her first opera with Giuseppe Verdi's romantic tragedy at the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma from May 24.

The 44-year-old daughter of director Francis Ford Coppola has joined forces with production designer Nathan Crowley, who was nominated for an Oscar for "The Dark Knight" as well as "Interstellar" and "The Prestige".

Coppola was picked to direct the opera after showing "a particular aesthetic and musical sensibility, balanced between the classical and modern" in her historical film drama "Marie Antoinette", the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma said in a statement.

For fashion designer Valentino, who has dressed stars including Jennifer Lopez and Keira Knightley, making the costumes for Violetta, Traviata's main character, was "a dream come true", the statement said.

Traviata, based on an 1848 novel by Alexandre Dumas, tells the story of a courtesan who is wooed by a young provincial bourgeois and persuaded to abandon her wild life, until her fiance's father attempts to break up the couple.

The Roman theatre has been attempting a revival after a series of damaging orchestra and chorus strikes over the past few years, fuelled by financial problems as Italy suffered its deepest recession since World War II.