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France: Amaury goes all classical

07 May 2011 at 16:26 CEST

All alone on stage

Amaury Vassili's rehearsal started off with checking the sound in the in-ear-monitoring, but directly after that, the young tenor impressed everyone with his strong voice already in the first take!

On stage today, the French top star was wearing a black suit, with some red stripes on it and golden buttons attached. As a shirt, he chose a timeless white one.

Amaury is all alone on stage and all the attention of the cameras is concentrated on him. He is standing still throughout most of the song which works very well with his classical song Sognu. The French hopeful seemed very concentrated from start to end and got huge roars of applause after every performance.

The LED-backdrop for the French song starts off with a nightly scene and blue and white clouds, which are soon changing to a dawn scenery with red and orange colours with finally the sun appearing at the very end of the song.

At the end of Sognu, smoke on the floor and pyro effects are being used which looked spectacular both on stage and on the TV-screens.

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Backstage with Amaury

Amaury was very friendly backstage talking to the Eurovision.tv team.

"My personal favourites are Italy and the UK", the young tenor revealed.

How do you feel?

"I feel very well. I worked hard to be prepared for this competition and I don't feel stressed at all so far. I hope I will have a lot of fun and people will appreciate my performance on stage."

What about this first rehearsal, what are your expectations?

"Well, I want to take this opportunity to check all technical details such as the cameras, the sound in the arena and the stage as well."
Did you met other contestants?

"Yeah, absolutely, I met Eric from Sweden and Raphael from Italy in Paris. I also met Nadine Beiler from Austria on a TV show in Kiev. Obviously, I met many contestants here in Düsseldorf."

What about the talisman you wearing?

"It's actually a gift from Marie Myriam. As you can see, it's a black hand and it comes from Portugal. She gave me this talisman as someone offered her a talisman in 1977 before she went to stage.  She thought it was important to give something to me before flying to Germany."

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Meeting the press

For 34 years, France hasn't won the Eurovison Song Contest, and Amaury Vassili said that it would be nice to be one of Marie Myriam's successors.

The head of delegation, Bruno Berberès explained that Amaury has sold lots of copies of his latest album.

The French team had initially chosen a different song to represent France, Maria, but it was later found out that it didn't comply with the Eurovision Song Contest rules.

Amaury Vassili explained that the Corsican language was used for his song, because it's a very romantic language.

French TV, it was disclosed, chose Amaury Vassili with the aim of winning.

"It is a fantastic opportunity for me to sing in front of millions of TV viewers", Amaury said.

The French singer has no special favourite for this year's Eurovision Song Contest, but he'd consider himself as a favourite. However, he added, everyone would have the same chances in the contest.

Amaury got a lot of reactions from the Corsican people, as they were honoured to see their language performed Eurovision Song Contest.

France got an award on stage from the Greek fanclub for the Eurovision Song Contest as it was voted the most popular song for the Greek fans.

At the end of the press conference, Amaury Vassili performed parts of a song acapella which was really appreciated by the crowd.

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Following an astonishing first album that went double platinum in France (over 200,000 copies sold), a sell-out gig at L’Olympia, a duet with Katherine Jenkins (the new UK classic-pop crossover star whose albums have sold 4 million copies, five of them making #1 in the charts) and international success (over 50,000 album copies sold worldwide with releases in Canada, South Africa, South Korea and the UK), the world’s youngest tenor is back! I

In November 2010, Amaury Vassili released his new album Cantero, whose title announces a wonderful combination of original compositions by Davide Esposito and Jean-Félix Lalanne and passionate new versions of classics from the Italian repertoire such as Caruso, Con Te Partiro (Andrea Bocelli), Dietro L’amore (Toto Cutugno) and Il Volo (Zucchero).