[2025] Rehearsals #1

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🇲🇹 Malta - Miriana Conte – SERVING

Are we ready for Malta’s Miriana Conte to serve sass, attitude, and maybe a red Swiss ball or six?

So, first things first. Miriana Conte is a 24-year-old Maltese singer known for her electrifying performances and a fearless approach to music. She first attempted to represent Malta at Eurovision in 2017, aged just 16. Eight years later, she’s here in Basel, having served her unique brand of queen energy at all the pre-parties along the way.

So, let’s talk staging. Whilst The Sound of Music remains an inspiration (we’re still do-re-mi-fa-s-s-serving, after all), the visual storytelling we saw at MESC has mostly gone. Firstly there’s a big prop – a set of huge sparkly red lips holding a spinning disco ball – the whole structure is probably three metres high, and sits in the centre of the stage.

It turns at the start, and Miriana is inside, wearing a bright yellow dress with a huge skirt made from tiered netting with black sleeves. She’s lifted out of the disco ball and the dress, to reveal a catsuit that’s the same style as the one we saw at MESC, but now black and red and VERY sparkly. Her hair is now also bright red, by the way – the whole thing feels like a transition from poisonous flower to queen of hearts.

The dance routine is very similar to MESC, but her four dancers have swapped the Von Trapp outfits for red fishnets, strappy black underwear and red fur jackets. The final chorus plays out on the frame stage, where the red Swiss balls appear for a bouncy finish. The graphics wall transitions between graphic art exploding flowers and bouncing leopard visuals, dancing legs and words from the song, finishing with DIVA NOT DOWN in huge letters . The whole thing is very Miriana – bold, unapologetic, and a lot of fun. What a way to start the day!

Also 🔥PYRO UPDATE: lots of smoke jets in the chorus, and a big finish.

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11:10 CEST: Rehearsal 2: 🇬🇪 Georgia - Mariam Shengelia – Freedom

Next up to rehearse is Georgia’s Mariam Shengalia, singing her orchestral power ballad Freedom. It’s sung in both Georgian and English, and there are definitely some 1960s influences in the production of this track. So we’re really interesting to see how it comes to life on the big stage.

Mariam comes from a small town in Georgia, and took part in both The X Factor Georgia and The Voice Georgia. She’s also a member of Mixtura, a band known for its fusion of diverse musical influences.

We have another big prop – it’s a geometric rock that stands in the centre of the stage - Mariam performs on top of it, wearing a stunning silver gown that looks like it’s made from satin with organza layers that give it structure, so she becomes part of the rock. Four male dancers perform on the stage around her, all wearing traditional Georgian chokha coats in black, with close fitting headdresses and black boots – during the second verse they perform a complex flag dance routine with blue and white flags

The graphics on the back wall are simple but beautiful, with a moon rising behind Mariam between the two stage mountains that transitions into a red sun with storm clouds and neon rings. The graphics become faster and more dynamic as the song progresses – lots of performances have used lighting and graphics as a way to drive the performance this year, and this is a really effective example.

There’s also a dress reveal! During the middle eight, Mariam comes down from her rock, steps seamlessly out of her dress (it doesn’t move an inch, which suggests it’s VERY heavy), to reveal a red sequinned jumpsuit for the final chorus, which she performs on the frame stage against a backdrop of mountains. The strings and drums in this song are HUGE – it feels like the music is rising up through the arena floor

🔥 PYRO update! Heavy fog around the rock at the start, which dissipates to make it look like Mariam and her dancers are rising out of it. Today is going to be ALL about the drama.

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11:50 CEST: Rehearsal 3: 🇩🇰 Denmark - Sissal – Hallucination

France will compete at the point in next week’s Second Semi-Final, but they don’t rehearse until Thursday, with the rest of the Big 5. Which means it’s time for Denmark’s Sissal to rehearse her Eurodance banger Hallucination.

Sissal lives in Copenhagen but is originally from Thorshavn in the Faroe Islands, which was also home to 2023’s Reiley.

If you cast your mind back to March, Sissal won Dansk Melodi Grand Prix in a green sparkly leotard, accompanied by two contemporary dancers and a very powerful wind machine. Shortly after that she promised us a revamp for Basel, and that’s exactly what we’ve got.

The main prop is a central transparent curtain that hangs in the middle of the stage and stretches from floor to ceiling. It’s in four parts, so it floats in the wind machine and creates a really simple but effective sense of movement around Sissal, who sings on a black plinth in the middle, in a tunnel of pulsing neon lights and strobes. She performs the first verse and chorus in an entirely fabulous blue and white coat with hundreds of organza layers - honestly, it’s like the Met Gala in here today.

The coat is removed in the second verse to reveal a long-sleeved leotard and thigh boots in sparkly electric blue – she has four dancers who press their faces into the curtain around Sissal like ghosts, before dancing around her with blue fabric handkerchiefs. In the final section the dancers are entirely wrapped in blue fabric, as Sissal descends from her plinth and moves to the frame stage for the final chorus. The dancers’ feet are anchored to the floor, so they can lean into their dance moves like they’re swaying in the wind as Sissal builds up for the big finish. No pyro, but that final note takes the roof off St Jakobshalle all on its own.

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12:30 CEST: Rehearsal 4: 🇨🇿 Czechia - ADONXS – Kiss Kiss Goodbye

And finally before we take a break for lunch, it’s time for Czechia’s ADONXS to perform his dramatic ballad Kiss Kiss Goodbye. ADONXS not only has a successful career in music, he’s also worked as a professional dancer and model. There was no national final in Czechia this year, so our only clue to today’s staging is the time travel storytelling from the official video.

Actually that’s not true, because for the second year running Czechia have given us staging notes! Love that for us. Here’s what they have to say:

“The main focus of this performance is Adonxs’ stage presence, vocals and charm. It’s a clean, elegant concept that fully embraces the possibilities offered by the Eurovision stage, using the latest lighting technology to create effects that create waves and evoke the movie Inception.

The dance break and choreography have evolved for the Eurovision TV audience, creating an emotional, engaging and visually mesmerizing experience for both the viewers at home and the audience in the arena.”

So, a few more details, starting with Adonxs’ outfit – silver wide-legged trousers, with a white top that’s like a vest, but with sleeves and white gloves. Yes, we know a vest with sleeves makes no sense, but go with us on this.

The staging is dramatically white, with strobing black shapes on the LED wall that make it feel like some kind of dystopian heaven. During the second verse, four dancers in matching outfits join Adonx for a routine on a pure white floor. Then the lego lights descend for an uptempo dance break bathed in red strobe lighting – a dramatic moment of colour that momentarily takes your breath away.

The references provided by the Czechia delegation makes SO much sense when you see it on stage and on screen – the white is a dramatic metaphor for a clean break, and Adonx delivering the dismissal in the lyrics through lots of close-up camerawork is definitely a mood. No pyro or props, presumably because that would mess with the clean. This morning has been quite the ride already, no?

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Op dinsdag 6 mei 2025 12:58 schreef TheVulture het volgende:

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Ik ben heel benieuwd wat de jury's hier mee gaan doen, want zingen kan ze natuurlijk ook wel prima

Ik sluit dit niet uit voor een verrassing in de finale

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14:10 CEST: Rehearsal 5: 🇱🇺 Luxembourg - Laura Thorn – La Poupée Monte Le Son

Welcome back! Hope you had a nice lunch. It’s time for 25-year-old Laura Thorn from Luxembourg to rehearse - she’s a singer and multi-instrumentalist, as well as a teacher at the Conservatoire de Musique in the south of Luxembourg.

Sung in French, La Poupée Monte Le Son translates as ‘the doll turns up the sound’, and it’s a fun, up-tempo bop that is both a throwback and a sequel to Poupée de cire, poupée de son, the legendary song that won Eurovision for Luxembourg’s France Gall exactly sixty years ago.

It’s also exactly the kind of uptempo bop we need after lunch, and we’re interested to see how the staging has evolved since Laura win The Luxembourg Song Contest earlier this year. The answer is…a lot - the Doll-Laura concept, with male dancers who combine 60s-style moves with puppet references, has remained, but the ability to project huge LEDs on both the stage and the screen has elevated to something else entirely.

Now Laura is inside her own pink and red 1960’s style doll’s house, with animated hands that reach in to reposition her through the opening sequence. She has five male dancers, wearing similar red velvet suits to the ones we saw at The Luxembourg Song Contest, but the way they interact with Laura is now a precision dance routine, where her doll-like stiffness at the start relaxes through the performance into something more natural and human. She leads them down the walkway in the second verse, figuratively and literally leaving the doll’s house behind, so the final section can play out on the frame stage.

This story is told in her costume too – the pink doll dress she wore in the national final has been replaced with a much more sophisticated version, in pale pink with corset-style lacing, paired with silver thigh boots. In the middle eight the pink dress comes off to reveal a sparkly silver dress underneath – there are no female dancers in this version, it’s just Laura and her dancers creating what feels more like a dance break than the original version. It was always a fun song, but this staging elevates it a much more cohesive and powerful bit of visual storytelling.

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14:50 CEST: Rehearsal 6: 🇮🇱 Israel - Yuval Raphael – New Day Will Rise

Next up to rehearse is Israel’s Yuval Raphael, with her soaring ballad New Day Will Rise, which is sung in a combination of English, French and Hebrew. Yuval is 24 and comes from Ra’anana near Tel Aviv, but she also lived in Geneva for a few years as a child, so she’s no stranger to Switzerland.

Winning Israel’s TV talent show HaKokhav HaBa was Yuval’s ticket to Eurovision, but the song came later, so we don’t have any staging references to work with right now. But that’s fine, because we’re right here watching the performance live.

First thing to point out – there’s a GIANT prop in the centre of the stage - the biggest we've seen so far this year. It’s a two tier circular structure maybe five metres high, with a curved staircase on one side. The top tier is slightly smaller than the bottom, and each circle is draped with a glittering curtain of silver strands that encase it all the way round. Imagine a modern take on a vintage birdcage, or a chandelier you can climb. It’s not entirely representative of either, but hopefully that helps you imagine it until you can see actual photos.

Yuval starts the performance in a shadow of blue light on the frame stage, wearing a tailored black trouser suit with square shoulders and draped flamenco sleeves. She heads back down the walkway in the second verse, and there’s a lovely single camera shot where she walks around the cage as she sings the French section, then climbs the stairs to perform the Hebrew verse and the remainder of the song from a platform inside the top tier. Up close you can see that the cage is made of individual strands of crystals, so more like a chandelier.

Another moment – at one point Yuval lifts her arms and the draped sleeves of her jacket look like wings, which makes us think that maybe we were on the right track with the birdcage metaphor. The LED wall adds flowing water over black rocks, the power of the water building with the final chorus until the whole set fades to white for the soft piano notes into the final line.

🔥 PYRO update: a shower of fireworks from the back of the stage in the key change chorus.

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15:30 CEST: Rehearsal 7: 🇷🇸 Serbia - Princ – Mila

In the second Semi-Final Germany will be providing the bop meat in this power ballad sandwich, but they’re one of the Big 5 so will be rehearsing on Thursday. So we’re skipping straight to Serbia’s Princ, and his love song Mila.

As well as being a singer, Princ can also play guitar and drums. He's fronted a rock band, was a finalist on The Voice Bulgaria, and as also tried out for Eurovision before, coming second to Luke Black’s Samo Mi Se Spava in 2023. So the big stage is very much his happy place.

First thing to note re. Princ’s staging – the opening moon from Pesma za Evroviziju is no more, along with the spinning dancer and the leather trousers and waistcoat. Which means we’re adding Mila to the list of acts that have undergone a total staging overhaul.

Princ begins this performance in the centre of the main stage, singing the opening verse in shadow backed by a halo of light as three male dancers in black outfits draw him into a beautifully choreographed contemporary routine. He’s wearing a tailored red suit, and there’s a totally unexpected and dramatic moment where two of his dancers march him down the walkway, literally dragging him by his legs as the LED screen explodes with red lights and fiery graphics.

It's presumably a visual metaphor for the Serbian lyric that translates as ‘you have brought life back from the edge' - Princ doesn’t miss a note, which is extraordinary considering the precision movements and physicality of this routine. The whole thing feels a million miles away from Pesma – probably one of our biggest transformations so far this year.

🔥PYRO UPDATE: Low fog at the start, then an explosion of flames in the final verse.

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16:10 CEST: Rehearsal 8: 🇫🇮 Finland - Erika Vikman – ICH KOMME

And finally for today’s first rehearsals, it’s a big climax banger of an ending from Finland’s Erika Vikman. She’s a well-known star in Finland, having won the Tangomarkkinat festival in 2016, and brought the unforgettable Cicciolina to UMK in 2020. That wasn’t her Eurovision big moment, but Ich Komme definitely is.

It’s sung in Finnish with a light sprinkling of German – will it be the black latex outfit from UMK, or the metallic ensemble from the official UMK video?

So the best way to describe this is UMK, but…go harder. Erika sings the first verse and chorus on a circular gold plinth, before taking her gold microphone on a fast-paced journey down the walkway to the frame stage. She’s wearing a new version of the black latex outfit with thigh boots we saw at UMK, this one more leather than latex and structured in the waist with metallic studs and long black gloves. No dancers required, because Erika entirely owns every corner of this stage – every step and look to camera is precision choreographed to allow her to connect with the audience.

And then the big finale - as the tempo picks up, Erika heads back to the main stage and mounts her giant gold microphone for the final ascension. We wish it was possible to describe how the last 30 seconds of bass feels in this arena, but if you’ve got tickets for the second Semi-Final you are in for an extraordinary finish. Or Finnish, if you like.

We haven’t even talked about the LED wall, but it’s much the same as UMK with giant ICH KOMME graphics and a final ERIKA. And a final 🔥 PYRO UPDATE - blasts of smoke on the walkway in the middle section.

We very much need a lie down.