Lynn Macgillivray
Latvia’s national selection show for the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest (Supernova 2018) came to a conclusion last night, with Laura Rizzotto taking the crown. She was one of the favourites from the beginning alongside MADARA and Marcus Riva and her classy, elegant performance of “Funny Girl” saw her win votes from both the jury and viewing public.
Latvian broadcaster Latvijas Televiziya (LTV) staged Supernova 2018 and received ninety-three entries towards the end of last year. Sixty-three of these entries then got through to an online voting stage where the public could rate their favourites, choosing a like or dislike option. A professional jury then took these results into consideration and picked the best thirty to compete in a live audition. Twenty-one of these then went on to perform in three semi-finals before Laura Rizzotto won the grand final last night. She will, therefore, be off to Lisbon in May to represent Latvia at the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest.
You can watch Laura Rizzotto perform “Funny Girl” below:
Latvia made its Eurovision debut in 2000 with Brainstorm who finished in third place. Two years later, Latvia sent Marie N off to Tallinn, Estonia with the fun, catchy song “I Wanna”. This song had everything from dancers to costume changes and it went on to win the competition. In recent years, however, Latvia has struggled to qualify for the final, only qualifying twice since 2009.
Latvia will be hoping they can do better than their recent form and win the competition this year, however, they already have some tough competition. Other acts that have been announced so far are Sennek for Belgium, Saara Aalto for Finland, Waylon for the Netherlands, AISEL for Azerbaijan, Cesar Sampson for Austria, Jessica Mauboy for Australia, Eugent Bushpepa for Albania, Iriao for Georgia, Madame Monsieur for France, Julia Samoylova for Russia, Alfred & Amaia for Spain, Mikolas Josef for the Czech Republic, Ryan O’Shaughnessy for Ireland, Eleni Foureira for Cyprus, Christabelle for Malta, Zibbz for Switzerland, SuRie for the United Kingdom, Rasmussen for Denmark, Ermal Meta and Fabrizio Moro for Italy, Eye Cue for F.Y.R Macedonia, Franka for Croatia, Netta Barzilai for Israel, Gianna Terzi for Greece, Vanja Radovanovic for Montenegro, Sanja Ilic and Balkanika for Serbia, Michael Schulte for Germany, DoReDos for Moldova, AWS for Hungary and Mélovin for Ukraine.
The Eurovision Song Contest 2018 will be hosted at the Altice Arena, Lisbon, Portugal; with the two Semi-Finals taking place on 8 May and 10 May and the Grand Final taking place on 12 May. A total of 43 countries will compete in the contest.
