Opera Chic

Nicola Benedetti on "Breaking the States"

Try to front but you can't step up to Nicola Benedetti's skillz (or her Sophia Loren cat eye and her effortless Marianne Faithfull hair).

She's currently on tour to celebrate her recently-dropped The Silver Violin disc of strings pieces written for Hollywood by mixed composers such as Korngold, Williams (Schindler's List), Shore (Eastern Promises) and Shostakovich.

Like many starry-eyed Brits before her -- Katherine Jenkins and Cheryl Cole most recently -- the Scottish violinist is going for the American uplift, or, "Breaking the States" as she calls it. 

We might never see her on the cover of American Vogue (a stretch for all classical artists, sadly), but she's broken into the late night tv show circuit with fellow Scot Craig Ferguson's The Late Late Show a couple weeks ago (clip above).

Opera Chic & Grazia.it: Nicola Benedetti on Being Nicola

(Decca/Simon Fowler)

For OC's latest column Stasera Esco at Grazia.it, Italian-Scottish violinist Nicola Benedetti spoke about her new CD of Italian works and her Italian roots. Read about it (in Italian) here.

 

Nicola Benedetti is Comfy-Confident

No, that's not a photo of Nicola Benedetti.

The Coen brother's True Grit opened the 61st Berlin Film Festival on Thursday and the film's protagonist, Mattie Ross, played by 14-year-old American actress Hailee Steinfeld (above), was snapped at a press conference in an awesomely age-appropriate dress. Not that it's out of character for the California native. Alongside Coen brother's co-stars Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon, the young breakout star is a a welcome relief from (slightly older, vastly wilder) colleagues Miley Cyrus and Demi Lovato (although the exception to the rule is bad-girl Lindsay Lohan during her Mean Girls years, NSFW-ish photo under the cut).

OC was reading an article on young violinist Nicola Benedetti from last weekend's Financial Times and although we're totally cool with the piece, what left the biggest impression was the 23-year-old, half-Italian/half-Scottish girl's down-home style, appearing in her FT photo with fabulously tousled hair and a big, comfy sweater.

While we're not comparing the style aesthetics of a 14-year-old to a 23-year-old, we're all for her skills-over-cleavage editorial approach. The pen is mightier than the push-up bra (or corset). Sure, we all like bewbs in our classical music, but there's a fine line between conservatory and cabaret -- like the thinnest, thin-gauge E string.

Benedetti's new disc drops later this month Tchaikovsky and Bruch violin concertos which she plays on the "Earl Spencer" 1714 Stradivarius, on loan from American banker Jonathan Moulds and worth over 3 million USD.

For those weak of will and flesh, NSFW Blohan's iconic photo is under the cut.