France goes into the 2011 Eurovision Song Contest in Dusseldorf on Saturday with the track Sognu, sung by Amaury Vassili.
It's an unusual entry as it is sung in Corsican, and very much an operatic style song. But as he is one of the youngest professional tenors in the world, it is a style that he is familiar with.
To those unfamiliar with Corsican - like me - you might be forgiven for thinking that it was actually in Italian, a language much more associated with opera.
In short it works well, and a bonus for giving one of France's minority languages an international audience.
Vassili comes from Rouen, and his debut album Vincero, released in 2009, sold over 250,000 copies internationally. His second album Cantero was released in November 2010 and like his debut it went into the top ten in france.
France automatically qualifies for the final on Saturday.
Since 2000, the UK, Germany, France and Spain have automatically qualified for the Eurovision final, regardless of their positions on the scoreboard in previous Contests because they are the four biggest financial contributors to the EBU. In 2010 Italy also joined this group.
Last year France finished 12th with Allez Ola Olé by Jessy Matador, the winner being germany with Lena's Satellite. Lena is also representing Germany this year.
Speaking to the Eurovision Song Contest 2011 website on May 8, he said: "My first rehearsal was really good."
He added: "I thought it was very hard, since we had a lot of things to check, like the in-ear monitors. Everything was very complicated in the preparations. But when I was on stage, it was very simple."
No comments:
Post a Comment