Ciao Italia! - When you try to find the influencer of Eurovision, you have to look up to history of legendary Italian festival Sanremo. The 2019 edition of Festival di Sanremo starts tomorrow at Teatro Ariston as always. Famous Italian musician Claudio Baglioni will be the artistic director and the host of Festival di Sanremo for the second time. He took the flag from Carlo Conti in 2018. This year he is not alone, actor Claudio Bisio and comedian Virginia Raffaele will be co-hosting.
Festival is divided into 5 consecutive nights, starting tomorrow. There are 24 acts competing and famous singers of Italy are in this year. Results are going to be decided by juries, demoscopic poll and public. Juries are divided to 2 sections; expert jury and press jury. In the first three nights, public votes will affect %40, demoscopic poll %30 and press jury % 30. In the 4th and 5th nights, public votes will be more important as they affect the %50 of the results, press jury %30, expert jury %20.
In the final night on Saturday, after the results are announced from 24th to 4th, the top 3 are going to be voted from the beginning, and the winner will be decided by that way.
In the previous editions, 4th night was used as an elimination night in which 4 acts eliminated and didn’t advance to the final night. Last year the rules changed. Even they are scored all nights, no one eliminates and they all perform again. In the 1st night, all 24 acts will perform. 2nd and 3rd nights includes 12 acts from 24. 4th night can be explained as a break and duet night, since the competitors will cover a song with a guest singer who is not competing.
Italy uses Festival di Sanremo as a national final for Eurovision Song Contest. The winner has the chance to represent Italy in Tel Aviv but in case he/she declines the request, the representative is going to be chosen among the other competitors.
This years’ acts include former Eurovision participants and Festival di Sanremo winners such as; Il Volo and Arisa. As all Eurovision fans know, pop-opera trio Il Volo won the 2015 edition with their majestic song “Grande Amore” and represented Italy at Eurovision 2015 in Vienna. Even they won the televote by a landslide, they got 3rd place at the grand final and brought one of the most successful results to Italy. They are back this year with a song called “Musica che resta”. In case they win this year, they stated that they might postpone their tour for Eurovision.
Arisa is also a former Sanremo winner from 2014 with the song “Controvento” but she didn’t want to take part in Eurovision that year, as a result another famous singer Emma Marrone was internally selected. She represented her country in Copenhagen with ther song “La Mia é Citta”, unfortunately she finished 21st.
Here are the 24 competitors and their song titles:
Last year Ermal Meta & Fabrizio Moro won Festival di Sanremo with their song “Non mi avete fatto niente” and represented Italy in Lisbon, they finished 5th overall with taking 3rd highest score from televoters.
1st night of Festival di Sanremo will take place tomorrow night at 20:30 CET and can be watched from RAI 1.
What are you expecting from Italy this year? Can this year be Il Volo’s year again? Let us know.