Following the rehearsals today, each of the Big 5 acts (France, Spain, Italy, United Kingdom and Germany) drew lots to decide which half of the grand final they get to perform in next Saturday. Host nation Israel is already confirmed as the 14th song to appear.
To (tediously predictable) cries of foul, France, Italy, The United Kingdom and Spain all scored spots in the second part of the show. Germany was left to sing in the first half. This kind of split last happened in 2017, where Italy were in the first half, with the other four in the second.
(Eurovision urban myth has it that German TV and the EBU have a deal that if picked for the first half, Germany will only ever sing tenth or later in the running order.)
Coming next
Today was the last day of individual rehearsals and saw bookies shorten the odds on a French victory. Italy too attracted interest. The other acts tended to drift somewhat.
We’ve heard that Moldova and the Netherlands will have extra rehearsal time this afternoon to iron out technical issues – but these won’t be open to fans, so we can’t report back. As you already might have heard, Estonia and Portugal have taken advantage of a third rehearsal.
Tomorrow, there’s a full dress rehearsal in the afternoon for the first semi-final and the jury show in the evening. So far, ticket sales are sluggish, with LOTS of empty seats at all prices – we fully expect them to be given away free tomorrow.
This evening an orange carpet opening ceremony sees all of the participants in their Sunday best posing on contract cord and answering questions about the weather and what they like most about Israel.
It’s broadcast live online, join us and pass comment.
It was a difficult and long three minutes, and I couldn’t wait for it to end. Which it did. Just not quickly enough.
Micheal’s hand movements throughout seemed wooden and forced, and will someone have a word and let the boy know that vocal twiddling isn’t needed. He simply needs to sing the song and look down the camera.
As an aside, there was no evidence of any strep throat during the rehearsals I saw.
The house idea is lovely, but the wicker man shaking everyone awake is a prop too far, and looked frankly ridiculous. What followed was – to me – messy and disjointed. The only decent part of the staging was the last 30-45 seconds, where we saw Miki on stage with the backing dancers simply having fun.
g was set to do as well as everyone suggests, would there be any need for additional storytelling? There was none at the French National Final and it was still a strong song. A song should be sold on content and not on a message, in my opinion, and it all felt contrived and a little cold.
