Eurovision is here! Delegations have been arriving in Basel in the last few days and rehearsals started on May 3. After closing the first rehearsals to the press in 2022, the EBU has now done away with TikTok videoclips. They will instead release sets of three photographs a day after each rehearsal, as well as description of the proceedings on their official channels. As such, today, we cover yesterday’s rehearsals, and continue with San Marino, the fourth rehearsal of the day, with “Tutta l’Italia”.
🇸🇲 San Marino – Gabry Ponte – First rehearsal
The following pictures have been published by the official Eurovision accounts. (Source: Alma Bengtsson, Corinne Cumming / EBU)
What happened on stage?
This description is sourced from indications given by the official Eurovision Reddit account.
- Unsurprisingly, the focus of the performance is on Gabry Ponte, with (apparently) little camera focus on the three vocalists, who are masked and not credited in the official live-blog descriptions (two of them may be Andrea Bonomo and Edwyn Roberts Clarke, who have performed the song with Ponte previously during the season)
- There are no backing dancers, but two instrument players, one with an accordion and the other with a tambourine
- The level of focus on each element is not yet known, but the live-blog has been comparing it to “Nocturne” (Norway 1995) instead of more recent DJ acts (Norway 2017, Finland 2019, Austria 2022) where singers were more on the forefront ; the 1995 reference makes it hard to compare because the focus on “the fiddler” (Fionnuala Sherry) was due to the structure of the song, with just five lines of lyrics, split at the very beginning and end ; this is not the case for “Tutta l’Italia”, which has much more lines
- Gabry Ponte wears a silver jacket and uses large DJ decks that “looks like they’re made from mirrored panels” which reflect the lights from around ; he’s at the centre of the main stage
- The LED screen on the back wall shows pulsing light and graffiti
- In terms of pyrotechnics, there will be flame jets, fireworks, smoke jets, and a firework finish for the last section of the song.
Stay tuned for further coverage today, with the rehearsals of yesterday, and for our live coverage on the ground starting on May 10, which will include (among other things) the full dress rehearsals and the live shows, live from Basel!
