The Eurovision opening ceremony was much quieter than usual. The most likely explanation is an effort to maintain security, but even that doesn’t explain everything.
Malmö
Is it this joke?
The comment was repeated in the chat of the live broadcast on the Eurovision YouTube channel so many times that the disappointment of the viewers could be felt very clearly.
People were definitely not happy with the broadcast of this year’s Eurovision opening ceremony. There were enough grounds for complaint:
Why did the live broadcast show practically no footage from the actual turquoise carpet, but only from the back rooms?
Why were the interviews seen confusingly short?
Why was most of the broadcast spent showing viewers a pre-cut clip from the streets of Malmö?
Even on the Eurovision channel of the anonymous chat application Jodel, the verdict was unequivocal: this was the worst Eurovision opening ceremony ever.
Traditionally The opening ceremony of the Eurovision Song Contest was meant to be a festive and boisterous event in the Eurovision spirit.
International media and fans have been present, the ceremony has been organized in a spectacular location in the city center and as much attention as possible has been wanted for the event.
This year, it seemed that the whole turquoise carpet wanted to be treated with as little attention as possible. For the event organized in connection with the Malmö Live concert arena, media from different countries had been allocated much fewer places than before. There were no fans at all this year. The external setting was modest to say the least, and it certainly didn’t improve the situation when Malmö was rained when the ceremony started.
Reporters from the written media waited for the artists to arrive indoors, in one of the large conference rooms of the hotel connected to the Malmö Live hall. The mood was as high as in a medium-sized company’s training day.
After a long wait, artists began to trickle into the interior, but not everyone showed up at all. Suddenly, the organizers announced that the event would end “in two minutes”. For example, Croatia, which was considered the pre-favorite Baby Lasagna -artist didn’t show up to give any interviews to the writing media at all.
Maybe it was because he said on the Eurovision YouTube broadcast that he was “tired and hungry”.
Croatia’s Baby Lasagna did not come from the turquoise carpet outside the concert hall to the interior to give comments to print journalists.
The carpet is turquoise because the main sponsor of Eurovision is the Israeli company Moroccanoil, known for its turquoise color.
Probably the reason for the lack of turquoise carpet this year is also related to Israel.
The participation of Israel, which is fighting a war in Gaza, in Eurovision has aroused great opposition in Sweden. By the way, Malmö, which suffers from security problems, is, for example, a terrorism expert Magnus Ranstorpin by “probably the worst place to organize the Eurovision Song Contest”. The ingredients of a disaster are in the pile, Ranstorp told STT.
Malmö tries to avoid a disaster until the very end with extremely strict security measures. You may not bring bags to public events at all. Cops are patrolling everywhere.
So it’s no wonder that the turquoise carpet was arranged with much less attention than usual. The end result was, of course, a safe entity.
It is also no wonder that, despite the opposition, an Israeli artist participating in Eurovision Eden Golan did not attend the opening ceremony at all. The official reason is today’s Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel.
Teemu Keisteri and Henri Piispanen arrived on the turquoise carpet inside a denim egg.
To flop the absolute stars of the opening ceremony – at least when viewed through Finnish glasses – were the man known as Windows95man Teemu Keisteri and Henri Piispanen.
Most of this year’s artists were content to arrive in stylish attire and show off their costumes. A few got excited to sing.
Keisteri and Piispanen, on the other hand, did not spare. They stepped onto the turquoise carpet inside the denim egg so that only the two’s feet touched the outside of the egg. There was enough attention, and in an interview with HS, Keisteri already declared, perhaps at least half jokingly, that the goal in Eurovision is to finish in the top five.
“This is now brainwashed to my ears. The wrapper talked to me like this at Yle’s bakery,” Keisteri said and laughed.
The artist from several other countries also wore jeans at the opening ceremony. In the picture, Silia Kapsis representing Cyprus.
The text “Stands with Palestine” was written on the official Eurovision decoration.
For now anyway, you can get the Eurovision atmosphere by searching the streets of Malmö.
Near the center of the city there is a separate Eurovision street, but even there the traffic was very quiet around noon on Sunday. Messages supporting Palestine were written on some of the official Eurovision decorations.
The person who arrived from France to perform in the city tried to maintain the party spirit alone Aimé Charmot. He cycled back and forth down the street on his bike, which blew both smoke and soap bubbles and had both a piano and drums installed on it.
The French street musician Aimé Charmot tried to cheer up individual people on five streets.
Equally it was also quiet in the euro viusukylä at the end of viuskatu, where in the coming days several vius contestants from previous years and also this year will be seen. On Thursday, Viusukylä performs Windows95manon Friday Wrapper.
From the beginning of the afternoon, only individual families with children were present. Malmö people Sara and Anna Köhler the lack of people didn’t bother me, on the contrary.
“We came here during the day because we thought that there are few people here and we can be in peace,” said Sara Köhler.
Both said they were excited about the festivities that Eurovision brought to the city, but they were worried about the security situation.
“The security risk seems to have clearly increased. Police are everywhere,” said Anna Köhler.
HS follows the five-week period in the Viusuraporti, which can be found behind this link.
Anna Köhler (left), Ulle Köhler and Sara Köhler enjoy the peaceful atmosphere in Viusukylä.