Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Norway, a favorite of Eurovision, and Portugal are left out of Saturday's final

Hungary, Azerbaijan and Russia threaten the podium of the 2011 Eurovision Song Contest after qualifying on Tuesday night in the first semifinal of the competition, along with seven other countries who may sit on the grand gala scheduled for Saturday. The disco theme of Hungary or of Azerbaijan pulled the highest number of applause Portugal and very chanted the Norwegian Haba Haba Stella Mwangi, who seemed a parody of Shakira's Waka waka and was a favorite in the online bookmakers, are among the biggest losers of the evening.

As happens in Thursday's second qualifying round, 19 countries competed for the ten places available for the final. The triad consists of Judith Rakers, Stefan Raab and Anke Engelke was responsible for directing this show, which began with the Polish Magdalena and the rhythmic theme Tul jestem.

If the level of the screams that were heard in the stadium had to calibrate the potential participants, the disco What about my dreams? Wolf Kati (Hungary), the romantic Running Scared, Ell / Nikki, Azerbaijan, and Get you, the Russian heartthrob Alexej Vorobjov, many ballots would have the final victory.

They, and members of the so-called Big Five, comprising Spain, Italy, France, Germany and the United Kingdom, the countries largest financial contribution made to the festival, will join the candidates on Saturday, Serbia, Lithuania, Greece, Georgia, Switzerland, Finland and Iceland. They stood out, besides those already mentioned Portugal and Norway, representatives of Poland, Albania, Armenia, Turkey, Malta, San Marino and Croatia, as a result of the combination of telephone voting audience and a professional jury by country .

This is a mechanism that was introduced two years ago to stop the voting bias of the immigrant population in Western countries in favor of the East, which in recent years almost been marginalized from the top to the pioneers of Eurovision , which is now in its 56th edition. As befits such an open label such as "light music", the first semifinal of Eurovision 2011 has been on stage all kinds of styles, filtered through pop, folk, rock, disco, rhythm sixties ...

Only two things seem to have been banished from the festival: the accent or regional folk paraphernalia charge. Contrary to what we are accustomed to Eurovision, the extra-musical antics have been limited to a colorful recreation of the "Carnation Revolution" in charge of the already parodic Homens da Luta (Portugal) and the magical changes of the Croatian outfit Daria, with explosions by magician.

Speaking of costumes, there are many cases where it has crossed the fine line between recklessness and provocation of the eccentricity of the ridiculous. Special mention cases of Albania, Armenia and Georgia, not to mention full of Croatia, which was changed three times dressed in his successful action and not a single one.

Another thing that has almost been banished from this meeting of cultures is, curiously, the linguistic diversity. Only Portugal, Croatia, Poland and Greece (at times) have sung in their language. Had to wait for the curtains to each country that introduced the phrase "feel the rhythm of your heart" to hear something other than English.

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