Eurovision Song Contest 1991


The Eurovision Song Contest 1991 was the 36th Eurovision Song Contest and was held on 4 May 1991 in Rome. Due to the Gulf War and mounting tensions in Yugoslavia, RAI decided to move the contest from Sanremo to Rome, which was perceived to be more secure.
This was the last event in which the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia participated. The 1992 contest saw the participation of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. It was also the first time that Germany was represented in their reunited form since the East Germany joined West Germany by the German reunification.
Carola was the winner of this Contest with the song "Fångad av en stormvind". This was the third victory for Sweden, after 1974 and 1984. There was a tie between Carola and France's Amina, as both had received 146 points. This necessitated a 'count-back', a tie-breaking measure introduced after the infamous 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. Nowadays, rules establish that the country which has more points of more countries wins Eurovision, therefore France would have won the contest.

Location

The contest was originally scheduled to be held at Teatro Ariston in Sanremo, where the Sanremo Music Festival takes place annually. It was for the organisers to pay tribute to the Italian festival that inspired the creation of the Eurovision Song Contest. But following the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq and the outbreak of the Gulf War, the host broadcaster RAI decided in January 1991, to better ensure the security of foreign delegations, it would move the contest to Rome. This caused serious organisational problems and delays.
Rome is the capital of Italy and a special comune. 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, 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 all of the commentary during the voting was given in Italian, which is not an official language of the European Broadcasting Union.
Sara Carlson gave the opening ceremony performance, titled Celebration, 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 TV, and this was seen as one of her largest audiences.
The Netherlands did not participate in this contest 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.
This is the last contest where the official logo is in a language other than English. From 1992, the official logo of the Eurovision Song Contest remains in English.

Conductors

Each performance had a conductor who directed the orchestra.

Results

DrawCountryArtistSongLanguagePlacePoints
01Baby Doll"Brazil" Serbo-Croatian211
02Stefán & Eyfi"Nína"Icelandic1526
03Georgina & Paul Giordimaina"Could It Be"English6106
04Sophia Vossou"I anixi"Greek1336
05Sandra Simó"Canzone per te"Italian5118
06Thomas Forstner"Venedig im Regen"German220
07Sarah Bray"Un baiser volé"French1429
08Carola"Fångad av en stormvind"Swedish1146
09Amina"C'est le dernier qui a parlé qui a raison"French2146
10İzel Çeliköz, Reyhan Karaca & Can Uğurluer"İki Dakika"Turkish1244
11Kim Jackson"Could It Be That I'm In Love"English1047
12Dulce Pontes"Lusitana paixão"Portuguese862
13Anders Frandsen"Lige der hvor hjertet slår"Danish198
14Just 4 Fun"Mrs. Thompson"Norwegian1714
15Duo Datz"Kan" Hebrew3139
16Kaija Kärkinen"Hullu yö"Finnish206
17Atlantis 2000"Dieser Traum darf niemals sterben"German1810
18Clouseau"Geef het op"Dutch1623
19Sergio Dalma"Bailar pegados"Spanish4119
20Samantha Janus"A Message to Your Heart"English1047
21Elena Patroklou"SOS"Greek960
22Peppino di Capri"Comme è ddoce 'o mare"Neapolitan789

Voting structure

Each country had a jury who awarded 12, 10, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 point for their top ten songs.
During the final vote 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.

Tiebreak results

PlaceCountryArtistPoints12 points10 points
1Carola14645
2Amina14642

Score sheet

12 points

Below is a summary of all 12 point in the final:
N.ContestantVoting nation
4FranceAustria, Israel, Italy, Norway
4SwedenDenmark, Germany, Iceland, United Kingdom
3CyprusFrance, Greece, Malta
3IsraelSpain, Turkey, Yugoslavia
2ItalyFinland, Portugal
2MaltaIreland, Sweden
2SpainCyprus, Switzerland
2SwitzerlandBelgium, Luxembourg

Postcards

The singers 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:

Commentators and spokespersons

Spokespersons

Television

Participating countries
Some participating countries did not provide radio broadcasts for the event; the ones who did are listed below.
From this year, half of the members had to be music professionals.