The second night of the Eurovision semifinals in Moscow has ended. A famous Russian quartet opened the show with a cover song of the Italian “Volare” in a version accustomed for balalaika. Dancers dressed as Russian dolls and Kazaks made their appearance on the stage, and the first rows turned blue with Greek flags.

Prior to the announcement of the official opening by the hosts Andrej Malahov and Natalia Vodianova, the song “Believe”, which brought Eurovision in Moscow, was performed in an instrumental version for balalaikas. A curious fact is that although the competition took place in a huge stadium with capacity for 36 000 people, the audience only consisted of 20 000, since the stage itself took up a lot of space.  

The semifinals started with the Republic of Croatia and Igor Cukrov’s “Lijepa Tena”. Cukrov’s beautiful voice won him the award for a debut at the Split festival.

Ireland was represented by Sinead Mulvey and the band “Black Daisy” with the song “Et cetera”. The rock band, consisting of four eager to play girls, participated in the “Eurostar” reality.

Latvia’s appearance, accompanied by an argument about the language of the performance, took place despite their hesitations with regard to the economical crisis. Their song, Intars Busulis’s “Probka”, made a dynamic presentation, despite the slightly nervous stage presence of their performer.

The Serbian contestant, Marko Kon, formed his first band when he was 19. He plays the clarinet, the flute and the saxophone, and together with Alexander Kovach makes history in Serbian music. Their signatures stand at the bottom of at least 800 song lyrics. Marko Kon and Milaan presented the song “Shoes” (Cipela) in a Balkan punk style. However, their performance did not get the deserved appreciation and it didn’t make it for the finals.

The polish performer, Lidia Kopania, had been compared to Barbara Streisand because of her 8 octaves voice. She sang the ballade “I don’t wanna leave”. “…but it’s just my fate…” says the song, and Lidia’s fate was to leave without accumulating the voices needed to get her to the finals.

Alexander Rybak was four when he moved with his parents from Belarus to Norway. The rock ballade “Fairytale” is dedicated to his ex-girlfriend, who’s now married to another guy. Rybak was raised with music- his mother was a piano player and before being chosen to represent Norway in Eurovision, he participated in the “Music Idol” reality where he made it to the final four.

Christina Metaxas, the Cyprus contestant, is one of the two youngest participants. She is only 16 but already a poetry and children stories writer. The lyrics of the song she participated with, “Firefly,” were written by her brother, also a singer, who took part in this year’s “X-factor”- the Greek music reality. Unfortunately, the melting ballade will not move forward in the competition on Saturday.

After twelve years of silence, Slovakia is finally appearing in Eurovision. Kamil Mikulcik and Nela Pociskova presented the song “Let it move”. He graduated with economics, she’s 19 and playing in musicales and both are partners in a Slovakian TV series.