It’s been an action packed first day in the Eurovision arena for the first of the rehearsals, and we’ve been there to cover it all! Each day, we aim to bring an in-depth recap of the happenings of the day, including summaries and thoughts on the rehearsals of each act. Here’s the action from Day 1!
Bulgaria
Last up in today’s rehearsals was crowd favourite entry of Bulgaria. We all knew this rehearsal would make or break Bulgaria’s chances at winning the contest, but the hopes were high since we have Sasha Jean Baptiste working on the stage show. Despite that, it failed to deliver.
Visuals:
This is just so cold. Throughout the promo party performances, we saw the group unite and perform as a whole, and their chemistry was there. Now we’ve reached the main stage and all feeling and chemistry is lost, and I think this is hugely due to how this is staged. It’s very rigid, with all the movements stiff and somewhat unnecessary.
The group are standing on a tiered platform, and as they take turns of being the core vocalist, they move in and out, and change positions. The visuals to accompany these rigid movements are also coming across as bad choices for the performance. We were seeing a lot of split screens with the illusion created that two singers were facing each other to sing to one another, but the way the screen was cut wasn’t seamless, and in turn it looked clumsy. The split screens also crushed their potential for chemistry on stage, as it alienated one artists from another on stage. Hugely disappointing from the Bulgarian team, and I’d hope for improvements come the second rehearsal.
Visually the performance is dark, with that tinge of green we saw in the promotional pictures. That in itself is the appealing part of the performance, but the other elements of the rehearsal didn’t do it for me.
Costuming:
Costuming wise, we got what we expected, which is similar to what we saw in the promotional pictures for the group. There’s a lot of black, with the only colour in the costuming the red colour on her lips. I think the costuming for this song is on point, and I don’t have much more to say!
Vocals
Vocally, this was hit and miss. The female vocalists doesn’t have too many lines throughout the song, but it became fairly clear today that even the few notes she has, it’s still the backing vocalist doing the hard yards. They’ve embellished the song quite a lot, especially in the opening moments as well as the closing parts of the song, and as we’ve used to the studio version, it was perhaps a bit jarring.
The other criticism would be that at the end of the performance, the female vocals (whoever it is actually singing them) overpowers the male vocalists to the extent that it was actually difficult to hear, and unclear. I think it’s still possible to let her shine, whilst still maintaining the level of vocals from the male performers of the group. The vocalist of the second verse was by far the highlight, and he nailed his performance, especially in the final run through where his voice really did shine even through the simple harmonies.
