Life after Helsinki 2007 Eurovision

The 70th Sanremo festival will take place in Teatro Ariston on February 4-8, 2020. That is all that is known from the meeting between RAI and the city of Sanremo officials earlier this month. Since Claudio Baglioni stepped down as the artistic director and the host of the past two very succesful editions no one seems to know who will be given this job, or will there be separate artistic director and host. Many names have been rumored, denied and dismissed as the possible artistic director from the return of Carlo Conti to Mina to Andrea Bocelli and lately Lucio Presta, while for the hosting job Amadeus and Alessandro Cattalan have been the most gossiped ones but Baglioni could also be an unlikely but possible last minute call to act as both again, or the eternal other choices Fabio Fazio or Paolo Bonolis. Bonolis however has often stated he would do it once Sanremo moves out of the tiny theater and he could make it a big scale show like Eurovision in some arena. Meanwhile Sanremo ...

Sanremo is in midway and tonight the other half of songs will be performed and voted for the second time. Tonight's guest stars are Antonello Venditti, Ornella Vanoni, Alessandra Amoroso, Eurovision veterans Raf and Umberto Tozzi, Fabio Rovazzi, Serena Rossi (paying hommage to Mia Martini who she played in a television movie “Io sono Mia”) and comic Paolo Cevoli. Yesterday night was totally stolen by Marco Mengoni, and Virginia Raffaele finally had a chance to shine in her comic Carmen. That came thankfully after Michelle Hunziker was on stage and totally stole her thunder with Bisio. If Mengoni got a standing ovation so did Loredana Bertè who is reaching out for the lion under palm tree trophy for real this time. And it would be about the time, too, and I wouldn't mind her taking the ticket to Tel Aviv as well. How fun that would be? Her sister  Domenica Berté aka Mia Martini did it twice, let her make it a Bertè tris.  The viewing figures remain high but not breaking ...

Tonight's the night and the 69th Festival della Canzone Italiana in Sanremo starts and goes on until Saturday night when we will know the winner, and hopefully also the one going to Tel Aviv and Eurovison song contest 2019. A major change this year is there is only one category as the Newcomers were sorted out already in December in a festival for them alone and two winners got the ticket to the Big category: Mahmood and Einar.  Tonight's guest stars are Giorgia, Andrea Bocelli with his son Matteo, last year's host actor Pierfrancesco Favino, actor Claudio Santamaria and actor/director/writer/musician Rocco Papaleo. The hosts next to Claudio Baglioni this year are fabulous comedian, actress, impersonator Virginia Raffaele and actor, presenter, comedian, writer Claudio Bisio.  All 24 artists will perform their song tonight for the first time. The voting is 30% press center, 30% demoscopic jury and 40% televote. A notable mileston will happen tonight as well: Anna T...