music.wikisort.org - Event

The Eurovision Song Contest 1991 was the 36th edition of the annual Eurovision Song Contest. It took place in Rome, Italy, following the country's victory at the 1990 contest with the song "Insieme: 1992" by Toto Cutugno and was organised by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and host broadcaster Radiotelevisione Italiana (RAI). The contest was held at Studio 15 di Cinecittà on 4 May 1991 and was hosted by former Italian winners Gigliola Cinquetti and Toto Cutugno.

Eurovision Song Contest 1991
Dates
Final	4 May 1991
Host
Venue	Studio 15 di Cinecittà Rome, Italy
Presenter(s)	Gigliola Cinquetti Toto Cutugno
Musical director	Bruno Canfora
Directed by	Riccardo Donna
Executive supervisor	Frank Naef
Executive producer	Silvia Salvetti
Host broadcaster	Radiotelevisione Italiana (RAI)
Opening act	Recorded music video of Sara Carlson's "New Day (Celebrate)" amongst the ruins of ancient Rome Toto Cutugno performing "Insieme: 1992" and Gigliola Cinquetti performing "Non ho l'età"
Interval act	Arturo Brachetti
Website	eurovision.tv/event/rome-1991
Participants
Number of entries	22
Debuting countries	None
Returning countries	Malta
Non-returning countries	Netherlands
Participation map      Participating countries     Countries that participated in the past but not in 1991
Vote
Voting system	Each country awarded 12, 10, 8-1 point(s) to their 10 favourite songs
Nul points in final	Austria
Winning song	Sweden "Fångad av en stormvind"
1990 ← Eurovision Song Contest → 1992

Twenty-two countries took part in the contest with Malta participating for the first time since 1975, and the Netherlands deciding not to participate. This contest was also the last time that the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia participated, the country would soon be split up opening up new countries to participate in the coming years. It was also the first time that Germany was represented in their reunited form since East Germany joined West Germany by the German reunification.

The winner this year was Sweden with the song "Fångad av en stormvind" by Carola. There was a tie between Sweden and France with "C'est le dernier qui a parlé qui a raison" by Amina, as both songs had received 146 points. This necessitated a 'count-back', a tie-breaking measure introduced after the four-way tie in 1969. Both Sweden and France had received four sets of 12 points, but Sweden had received five sets of 10 points to France's two, so Carola was declared the winner.

Location

The contest was originally scheduled to be held at Teatro Ariston in Sanremo, where the Sanremo Music Festival takes place annually. This was meant for the organisers to pay tribute to the Italian festival that had inspired the creation of the Eurovision Song Contest. However, following the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq and the outbreak of the Gulf War, the host broadcaster RAI decided in January 1991 that to better ensure the security of foreign delegations it would move the contest to Rome. This caused serious organisational problems and delays.[1]

Rome is the capital of Italy and a special comune (named Comune di Roma Capitale). Rome also serves as the capital of the Lazio region. Studio 15 of Cinecittà, a large film studio in Rome, was later confirmed as the new venue. With an area of 400,000 square metres, it is the largest film studio in Europe, and is considered the hub of Italian cinema. The studios were constructed during the fascist era as part of a scheme to revive the Italian film industry.

Contest overview

The presenters were Gigliola Cinquetti and Toto Cutugno, who represented Italy when they won Eurovision in 1964 and 1990 respectively. Cutugno opened the contest singing "Insieme: 1992", and Cinquetti performed "Non ho l'età". Cutugno had some difficulty with the pronunciation of the song titles and names of the artists and conductors. Despite this, in Italy almost seven million people watched the show. In addition to tallying the vote numbers in English and French, Cinquetti and Cutugno gave each of the jury allotments in Italian as well.

Nearly the entire contest was hosted in Italian, which is not an official language of the European Broadcasting Union (English and French are, and in the Eurovision Song Contest it is mandatory to provide presentation in at least one of those languages). The overall staging and production standard received considerable criticism afterwards, including for wasting time which saw the broadcast overshoot its scheduled time allotment and for the haphazard and casual approach of the two presenters throughout but particularly during the voting, which saw Frank Naef, the independent scrutineer of the European Broadcasting Union, often being required to intervene in the process.[2][3]

Sara Carlson gave the opening performance of the contest, titled "New Day (Celebrate)", a mixture of modern dance in ancient settings of ancient Rome. The performance featured Carlson singing, and a mixture of street dance and classical dance choreographed to popular sounding music of the time. At the time, Carlson had appeared numerous times on Italian television, and this was seen as one of her largest audiences.

This was the last contest where the official logo was in a language other than English (Italian in this case). Since 1992, the official logo of the Eurovision Song Contest has remained in English.

Postcards

The competing artists were asked to sing a known Italian song which would then be used as a short clip for the postcard. The songs were in order:

Participating countries

Twenty-two countries competed this year. The Netherlands did not participate as it conflicted with the Remembrance of the Dead national holiday, and so Malta was allowed to participate in the contest for the first time in 16 years, unable to before due to restrictions on the number of countries allowed to participate.

Conductors

Each performance had a conductor who directed the orchestra.[4][5]

Returning artists

Artist	Country	Previous year(s)
Thomas Forstner	Austria	1989
Alexandros Panayi (backing singer)	Cyprus	1989 (as backing singer for Fani Polymeri and Yiannis Savvidakis)
Stefán Hilmarsson (part of Stefán and Eyfi)	Iceland	1988 (part of Beathoven)
Eiríkur Hauksson (part of Just 4 Fun)	Norway	1986 (for  Iceland, as part of ICY)
Hanne Krogh (part of Just 4 Fun)		1971, 1985 (part of Bobbysocks!)
Carola	Sweden	1983

Participants and results

R/O	Country	Artist	Song	Language[6][7]	Points	Place[8]
1	Yugoslavia	Baby Doll	"Brazil" (Бразил)	Serbo-Croatian	1	21
2	Iceland	Stefán and Eyfi	"Nína"	Icelandic	26	15
3	Malta	Paul Giordimaina and Georgina	"Could It Be"	English	106	6
4	Greece	Sophia Vossou	"I anixi" (Η άνοιξη)	Greek	36	13
5	Switzerland	Sandra Simó	"Canzone per te"	Italian	118	5
6	Austria	Thomas Forstner	"Venedig im Regen"	German	0	22
7	Luxembourg	Sarah Bray	"Un baiser volé"	French	29	14
8	Sweden	Carola	"Fångad av en stormvind"	Swedish	146	1
9	France	Amina	"C'est le dernier qui a parlé qui a raison"	French	146	2
10	Turkey	İzel Çeliköz, Reyhan Karaca and Can Uğurluer	"İki Dakika"	Turkish	44	12
11	Ireland	Kim Jackson	"Could It Be That I'm in Love"	English	47	10
12	Portugal	Dulce	"Lusitana paixão"	Portuguese	62	8
13	Denmark	Anders Frandsen	"Lige der hvor hjertet slår"	Danish	8	19
14	Norway	Just 4 Fun	"Mrs. Thompson"	Norwegian	14	17
15	Israel	Duo Datz	"Kan" (כאן)	Hebrew	139	3
16	Finland	Kaija	"Hullu yö"	Finnish	6	20
17	Germany	Atlantis 2000	"Dieser Traum darf niemals sterben"	German	10	18
18	Belgium	Clouseau	"Geef het op"	Dutch	23	16
19	Spain	Sergio Dalma	"Bailar pegados"	Spanish	119	4
20	United Kingdom	Samantha Janus	"A Message to Your Heart"	English	47	10
21	Cyprus	Elena Patroklou	"SOS"	Greek	60	9
22	Italy	Peppino di Capri	"Comme è ddoce 'o mare"	Neapolitan	89	7

Detailed voting results

Each country had a jury who awarded 12, 10, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 point(s) for their top ten songs.

During the final vote (Italy) none of the top three contenders - Sweden, Israel and France - had received any points up until the last 12-point vote. This vote went to France and for the first time in twenty-two years, there was a tie for first place, with France overcoming a large deficit to catch up with Sweden. However, since the four-way tie of 1969, the rules had been altered to ensure a single outright winner. The first step in the procedure was to check the number of 12-point votes awarded to each country. Sweden and France were still tied. But when counting the number of 10-point votes, Sweden had more and was finally declared the winner.

Present-day tiebreaking rules establish that the entry which has received points from the most countries wins; this means that France would have won the 1991 contest under those rules (having received points from 18 out of 22 countries, vs. 17 for Sweden).

Detailed voting results[9][10]

		Total score	Yugoslavia	Iceland	Malta	Greece	Switzerland	Austria	Luxembourg	Sweden	France	Turkey	Ireland	Portugal	Denmark	Norway	Israel	Finland	Germany	Belgium	Spain	United Kingdom	Cyprus	Italy
Contestants	Yugoslavia	1			1
	Iceland	26					4			10									5					7
	Malta	106	1			2	6	4	10	12	2	7	12	7		6			10	4	6	7		10
	Greece	36	4		5			2					1			1	4	1		1	5		10	2
	Switzerland	118	5	5		7		8	12	8	4	2	2	6	5	3	8	5	6	12		8	8	4
	Austria	0
	Luxembourg	29		4				5		1		3		2	4				3	2		3	2
	Sweden	146	6	12			10	10	7			6	3	10	12	8	10	8	12	10	4	12	6
	France	146	10	7	3	8	7	12		5			7	5		12	12	10	8	7	8	6	7	12
	Turkey	44			7						7				8		7				2	5		8
	Ireland	47	3		4		3	1	8			4			7		1	2	2	5		4		3
	Portugal	62		8		4	1		2	7	10	5			1	2		7			10		4	1
	Denmark	8								3						5
	Norway	14		6					1			1			2				4
	Israel	139	12	10	8	5	8		5	6	3	12	8	4	10	7		6		8	12	10	5
	Finland	6		1		1							4
	Germany	10													6						1		3
	Belgium	23						3		2	5							3			3	2		5
	Spain	119	8	2	6	10	12	7	6	4	6	8	6	8		4	2	4	7	6		1	12
	United Kingdom	47			10	3	5	6	3		1			1	3		5			3			1	6
	Cyprus	60	2	3	12	12			4		12		5	3			6		1
	Italy	89	7		2	6	2				8	10	10	12		10	3	12			7

Tiebreak results

Place	Country	Artist	Points	12 points	10 points
1	Sweden	Carola	146	4	5
2	France	Amina	146	4	2

12 points

Below is a summary of all 12 points in the final:

N.	Contestant	Nation(s) giving 12 points
4	France	Austria,  Israel,  Italy,  Norway
	Sweden	Denmark,  Germany,  Iceland,  United Kingdom
3	Cyprus	France,  Greece,  Malta
	Israel	Spain,  Turkey,  Yugoslavia
2	Italy	Finland,  Portugal
	Malta	Ireland,  Sweden
	Spain	Cyprus,  Switzerland
	Switzerland	Belgium,  Luxembourg

Spokespersons

This section needs additional citations for verification. (October 2021)

Each country announced their votes in the order of performance. The following is a list of spokespersons who announced the votes for their respective country.

Broadcasts

This section needs additional citations for verification. (October 2021)

National broadcasters were able to send a commentary team to the contest, in order to provide coverage of the contest in their own native language. In addition to the participating countries, the contest was also reportedly broadcast in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania and the Soviet Union via Intervision, and in Australia and South Korea.[5]

Broadcasters and commentators in participating countries

Country	Broadcaster(s)	Commentator(s)	Ref(s)
Austria	FS1	Herbert Dobrovolny
	Hitradio Ö3	Walter Richard Langer [de]
Belgium	BRTN TV1	Dutch: André Vermeulen	[12][13]
	RTBF1	French: Claude Delacroix	[12]
	BRTN Radio 2	Dutch: Julien Put [nl] and Marc Brillouet [nl]
	RTBF La Première	French: Stéphane Dupont
Cyprus	RIK	Evi Papamichail
	RIK Deftero	Pavlos Pavlou
Denmark	DR TV	Camilla Miehe-Renard [dk]
	DR P3	Camilla Miehe-Renard [dk], Jesper Bæhrenz and Andrew Jensen [dk]
Finland	YLE TV1	Erkki Pohjanheimo	[14][15]
	Radiomafia	Kai Ristola
France	Antenne 2	Léon Zitrone	[12]
	France Inter	Évelyne Dhéliat
Germany	Erstes Deutsches Fernsehen	Max Schautzer	[12]
	Deutschlandfunk/hr3	Ado Schlier [de]
Greece	ET1	Dafni Bokota
	ERA 1	Giorgos Mitropoulos
Iceland	Sjónvarpið	Arthúr Björgvin Bollason	[16]
Ireland	RTÉ 1	Pat Kenny
	RTÉ Radio 1	Larry Gogan
Israel	Israeli Television	No commentator
	Reshet Gimel	Yigal Ravid
Italy	Rai Uno	No commentator
	Rai Radio 2	Antonio De Robertis and Peppi Franzelin [it]
Luxembourg	RTL Télévision	Valérie Sarn [fr]
	RTL	André Torrent [fr]
Malta	TVM	Toni Sant	[17]
Norway	NRK	John Andreassen and Jahn Teigen
Portugal	RTP Canal 1	Ana do Carmo
	Antena 2	TBC
Spain	TVE 2	Tomás Fernando Flores [es]
Sweden	TV2	Harald Treutiger	[14]
	SR P3	Kalle Oldby and Rune Hallberg [sv]
Switzerland	TV DRS	German: Bernard Thurnheer [de]
	TSR[lower-alpha 1]	French: Lolita Morena
	TSI[lower-alpha 1]	Italian: Emanuela Gaggini
Turkey	TV1	Başak Doğru
	TRT Radyo 3	Erhan Konuk
United Kingdom	BBC1	Terry Wogan	[5]
	BBC Radio 2	Ken Bruce	[5]
Yugoslavia	TVB 1	Serbo-Croatian: Mladen Popović
	HTV 2	Serbo-Croatian: Ksenija Urličić	[18][19]
	TVSa 1	Unknown
	SLO 1	Slovene: Miša Molk

Broadcasters and commentators in non-participating countries

Country	Broadcaster(s)	Commentator(s)	Ref(s)
Hungary	MTV1	István Vágó	[20]
Poland	TP1	Unknown	[21]
Romania	TVR 1	Unknown	[22]
Soviet Union	ETV	Unknown	[14][15][21]
	Programme One	Unknown

Note

References

External links

• Official website

На других языках

---

- [en] Eurovision Song Contest 1991

---

[ru] Евровидение-1991

Конкурс песни Евровидение 1991 — 36-й конкурс песни «Евровидение». Он прошёл 4 мая 1991 года в Риме (Италия), на киностудии «Чинечитта».

---

---