And that completes our rehearsal blog from the second day in Vienna! If you think you’ve spotted the 10 qualifiers yet, come and let us know on social media or in our chat. In the meantime, see you tomorrow as the first rehearsals for the second semi-final begin!

GEORGIA
Lightning flashes, doomy clouds and dry ice introduce us to the Georgian entry, before Nina – dressed in black hotpants and a black top with black feathers attached to the shoulders – shouts at us for three minutes. I don’t mean that in a bad way, dramatic shouting is one of my favourite things! But this is definitely a 100%, always-on kind of performance. During the second verse, Conchita-esque wings are projected on the backing wall and Nina flaps her arms vaguely in time with them. Then the instrumental break happens and there’s a GIANT PAIR OF CRYING EYES on the wall instead, except the tears look like mercury and then they look like crawling ants and oh good grief this is a tiny bit amazing.

I mean, not “this will win Eurovision amazing”, but it’s kind of what we’ve been waiting for all day. It’s notable that this is entirely the Nina Sublatti show – no dancers, some hidden backing singers, no gimmicks beyond the video projections, just the singer nailing it at the front and centre of the stage. That makes it quite a static performance in many respects (unless they tweak the camerawork to make it more dynamic in the meantime), and she’ll have to be careful with the high notes on the “warrior” line each time – but if they fall into place, everything else ought to be fine. The first actual cheers erupt from the press centre, and we welcome Georgia to the grand final.

image copyright: Andres Putting (EBU)

ROMANIA
Quite a distinctive visual for this one, with black-and-white versions of scenes from the evocative music video playing in the background as the band does its stuff. (Makes sense – they obviously spent some money on it…) At first I thought they were actually using three big screens on stage, but no, it’s just another clever projection on the video wall – the “screens” are suitcases that open at the start and close again at the end. And indeed the whole stage is covered in suitcase props in different colours, each of them illuminated separately. It certainly gives the song a more distinctive visual identity than some of what we’ve seen, but it’s accompanied by some bright white lighting throughout that I’m not convinced works terribly well. Not that Voltaj are a hard rock band or anything, but a little more shade and darkness might suit it better.

Lead singer Călin is wearing a curious outfit consisting of a formal white shirt with a glittery crucifix where a bow-tie should be, and trousers that, from this distance, look for all the world like white tracksuit bottoms with a black pinstripe. But then I just mistook a projection for real-life screens, so what do I know?

Vocally this is as solid as you might expect from an experienced group; the backing vocals threaten to overtake things a bit, especially in the Coldplay-ish end section, but there’s time to make it all blend a bit better. So yes, a professional first impression from Romania, but I’m still not keen on the white lighting. (Just as I wrote that, the lighting in the press centre got a whole lot brighter too. Can the Romanians do magic?)

image copyright: Andreas Putting (EBU)

ALBANIA
There’s always a few countries whose first run-through is a complete mess, and it doesn’t necessarily mean anything in the grand scheme of things. Regardless, if my “duty” as a blogger is to say what I see, then: Albania’s first run-through was a complete mess. Confusing camera angles, pitchy vocals and a thoroughly uncomfortable-looking Elhaida in the middle of it all. But (but but but!) the whole point is that rehearsals are about working on these things, and the fan-press are typically very quick to hop on a Bandwagon of Imminent Failure only to be proven wrong further down the line.

Staging-wise, we’re looking at a busy backdrop of angular yellow, white and black shapes and flashes of light that threaten to overwhelm proceedings. A line of backing singers in white stand towards the back right-hand side of the stage, while Elhaida wanders around the front area. She’s dressed in a sleeveless black number with a glitter-studded black cape (sort of thing) over the top of it.

And there we go, the second run-through is already a lot more coherent and comfortable. The first two minutes still come across as disjointed, but the last chorus with a sweeping camera shot (we call it the “Hasselgård”) is where Elhaida’s vocals and the backings start to come together and deliver some real power. Two doubts remain: firstly, maybe that’s too little too late; and secondly, if and when the lead vocal does wander from its planned course (and it’s happened several times today already), there’s a chance that the average viewer will immediately switch off their ears and be lost forever.

Still, a decent rescue job after a shaky start for Albania, who are trying something quite interesting with this entry and something that could take a while to get right.

image copyright: Andres Putting (EBU)

DENMARK
It’s one of the things I hate saying as a blogger, but if you saw the national performance of this song, then you’ve already seen how they’re doing it here in Vienna. The outfits are the same, the girls in red are doing their cheesy moves, there’s the usual choreographed interaction between the band members, and it’s all filmed perfectly adequately for a first rehearsal. The several shots of crew members doing some “let’s pretend we’re the audience” moves suggests that capturing the crowd response is central to the Danish staging, which makes sense for a song that’s trying to surf on a wave of positive feeling.

The lead singer is more ginger than I remembered.

On the early runs the vocal blend isn’t fantastic, but that’s no priority at this stage. Interestingly, an older volunteer in the press centre just wandered over and, unprompted, told us that he thinks this is really good. And while it’s dangerous to extrapolate any conclusions from one man’s opinion, this is the kind of song that could be largely ignored by the fans but attract easily enough votes from normal members of the public (not that I’m suggesting us fans aren’t normal, of course…) to make its way through to next Saturday night.

Anyway, solid stuff from the Danes. What you thought about the entry before today will be what you think about it after today.

image copyright: Andres Putting (EBU)

Introduction
By the end of this afternoon’s rehearsal session, we’ll have seen all 16 of the first semi-finalists and should – in theory – have a better idea of who’ll be making it to Saturday night’s grand final and who won’t. Of course, it’s not quite that simple, is it? Regardless, stay tuned for our blog entries for Denmark, Albania, Romania and Georgia!