Anyway, the final show of Eurovision in Moscow became an absolute record-breaker as of expenditures, being far ahead the Greeks who spent €12 mln in 2006, and the Serbians who made it with €9.3 mln. The expenditures were mainly attributed to construction of the stage, -the largest one in the history of the contest, as well as to lease of Olympiysky sport complex, advertising, transportation, and escorting of delegacies. In particular, the director general of the First Channel, Konstantin Ernst boasted that they rented all LED screens available in Western Europe. From the very beginning the organizers considered the final show of the contest as unprofitable; they just couldn’t expect to win away at least some part of the expenses ’cause a good half of the tickets to Olympiysky turned out to have been distributed for free.

The public opinion about the expenditures was mostly negative (over 39% of 1,200 Russians polled by Online Market Intelligence responded negatively). Experts, too, tell that the organizers could make a proper final show in Moscow for as little as $10 mln. However, everybody agreed that the Moscow show had politics behind it, and was another great occasion to work at a positive image of Russia. So they spared neither expense, nor time of high-ranking persons: Vladimir Putin (the Prime Minister of Russia) visited rehearsals of the show, and Yuri Luzhkov (the mayor of Moscow city) gave a speech on the opening day. In follow-up of the final show of Eurovision Song Contest some organizers, including Konstantin Ernst, got letters of award from Dmitriy Medvedev, the President of Russia.

Moscow is gearing up for the Eurovision Song Contest final on Saturday, which will pit 25 nations against each other in a festival of outrageous costumes, flag-waving patriotism and clunky lyrics.

The event threatens to be overshadowed by violence, however, as gay rights activists plan to hold an unsanctioned march in central Moscow earlier in the day.

The final is scheduled to begin at 11 p.m. Saturday at the Olimpiisky Sports Complex. The show will be hosted by comedian Ivan Urgant and pop singer Alsou, who was a Eurovision contestant for Russia in 2000.

Last year’s winner, Dima Bilan, will perform with the circus show from Cirque du Soleil. Organizers also plan a satellite link with the International Space Station.

The first semifinal Tuesday saw 10 acts move on to the final, while another 10 finalists were to be selected in the second semifinal, which was to begin late Thursday night.

Russia, Germany, Great Britain, France and Spain have an automatic bye into the final.

Britain’s entry, Jade Ewen, will be accompanied on the piano by composer Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber. The German entry will feature burlesque star Dita von Teese.

Russia’s contestant, Anastasia Prikhodko, hosted a crowded party at the Eurodom club Wednesday. She performed her song, “Mamo,” as the audience knocked back vodka with traditional bread and salt.

Prikhodko’s song sparked controversy in Russia because its lyrics are in Ukrainian as well as Russian.

“All the listeners will understand the word ‘mama,’ whatever their language,” Prikhodko told The Moscow Times in a recent interview. “I would really like the audience at the contest to experience all the emotions that the heroine of this song goes through.”

Her song was panned as a “dirge of a ballad” by The Guardian this week.

Norway, Greece and Turkey are considered favorites to win, despite accusations from some fans and delegations of block voting by Eastern Europeans.

Gay rights activists are expected to hold a protest at about noon Saturday in central Moscow. Organizers said they would release the details on their web site, Gayrussia.ru.

Gay rights activists on several occasions have been beaten by opponents and physically prevented by police from staging gay pride events.

One Eurovision contestant has vowed to boycott the final if there is violence at the march, which organizers have dubbed “Slavic Pride.”

Gordon of The Toppers, the group representing The Netherlands, intends to attend the demonstration and will boycott the final if “there is extreme violence,” the group’s spokesman, Marco de Koning, said Thursday.
The Netherlands was set to perform in the second semifinal Thursday night.

Mayor Yury Luzhkov has called gay parades “satanic,” and City Hall spokesman Sergei Tsoi told Interfax last week that there had “never been a gay parade in Moscow, and there won’t be one.”

Any unsanctioned protests during Eurovision will be dealt with “harshly,” acting Moscow police chief Alexander Ivanov said Tuesday, Interfax reported.

A City Hall spokesman reached by telephone Thursday declined to confirm whether permission for the gay pride demonstration had been formally denied.

British gay rights activist Peter Tatchell flew to Moscow to attend the march and issued a statement Thursday calling for city authorities to hold talks with gay activists.

Tatchell attended the attempted gay pride march in Moscow in 2007 and was badly beaten and arrested.

Moscow dogcatchers resorted to poisoning and beating stray dogs to death as they followed orders from City Hall to clean up the streets ahead of the Eurovision Song Contest, animal rights activists said Wednesday.

Ecology for Human Rights, an animal rights group, has received about 50 complaints since last fall about the inhuman treatment of stray dogs at dog shelters, said Yelena Nadyozhkina, who organized a rally of about 70 people to protest the issue near the Pushkinskaya metro station on Wednesday.

She said dogcatchers often beat the animals to death and feed them poison that can cause them to choke to death.

“We are against inhuman treatment of animals and their killing,” Nadyozhkina said.

Mayor Yury Luzhkov “recently” issued an order “reinforcing the catching” of stray dogs, said Olga Veldina, spokeswoman for the prefect’s office in Moscow’s central administrative district.

Veldina said she had no further details about the order and no information about methods used to catch and deal with stray dogs.

Сity authorities have allocated 3 billion rubles ($93.8 million) for stray dogs in 2009, including for their catching, neutering and vaccination, Saveanimals.ru said, citing a May 7 City Hall order.

Moscow authorities removed stray dogs from the city ahead of the 1980 Summer Olympic Games.

Mikhail Dolbnya, an official who deals with stray dogs at the prefect’s office in the eastern administrative district, said he had not heard about the City Hall order.

“Our brigades are working as usual,” Dolbnya said.

He denied that stray dogs were treated inhumanely, calling such allegations “rubbish,” and he said the dogcatchers save people from dog bites.

There are some 30,000 stray dogs in Moscow, and the city plans to build 15 shelters to house them by the fall, Saveanimals.ru said.

Animal rights activists who attended Wednesday’s rally — from teenagers to pensioners — said they hoped that Eurovision would draw the international spotlight to their cause.

Protesters held signs in Russian and English that read, “Murder in the Name of Eurovision,” “A City Without Dogs Is Music Without Notes,” and “Eurovision, Defend Animals From Cruelty.”

On the poster: “Do these songs worth their lives?”

Anna Bogomolova, an 18-year-old student carrying a sign that said “Eurokilling 2009,” accused authorities of illegally clearing the streets of dogs “just because some foreign guests might not like them.”

Animal rights activists are not the first to use Eurovision to promote an issue. Gay rights activists plan to stage Moscow’s first gay pride parade on May 16, the final day of the contest, despite a ban by City Hall.

The Toppers

Gordon’s general opinion about Russia is, what he experienced until now, a country with a liberal state of mind and a country that is open to people from all sorts of backgrounds.

“After being one week in Moscow and experiencing the wonderful hospitality of the Russian people we all cannot believe that anything bad will happen during Gaypride. The Eurovision Song Contest is known to be an international event of love and happiness. We all have to cherish this message the next couple of days”.

Moscow gay parade

Moscow medics got a strict order: to hospitalize everyone with the slightest symptoms of the flu or even cold.

Gay rights activists have staged small unsanctioned parades in Moscow without government approval over the past few years. But they have faced arrests and severe beatings by anti-gay and neo-fascist groups.

Moscow gay parade

“The Moscow government is saying: Moscow has never had gay parades and it never will,” said Mayor Yuri Luzhkov’s spokesman, Sergei Tsoi. “Not only do they destroy morals within our society, but they consciously provoke disorder which threatens the lives of Muscovites and visitors.”

Parade organizer and prominent gay rights activist Nikolai Alekseyev said on his website www.gayrussia.ru that the event would take place anyway.

“This is our right and it is guaranteed by the constitution. No official, including the Moscow mayor, has the right to violate it,” Alekseyev said.

But Luzhkov’s spokesman said any attempt to hold an unsanctioned gay parade would be “toughly stopped by law enforcement agencies in accordance with the law.”

Luzhkov, who has been mayor of Moscow since 1992, once said gay parades were “a satanic act”.

Moscow gay parade

Russia did not decriminalize gay sex until 1993, two years after the Soviet Union’s collapse, and intolerance is widespread.

Moscow has no gay-friendly district and the homosexual scene is still largely underground. Public displays of affection between same-sex couples are rare.

The gay parade, scheduled for May 16, was meant to coincide with Moscow’s hosting of the Eurovision Song Contest. Activists had asked that competitors back homosexual rights on stage.

A Swiss-based Eurovision spokesman, currently in Moscow, declined to comment on the banning of the parade but said: “It’s not a secret that we have a large gay audience and we respect everyone’s backgrounds.”

(Reporting by Aydar Buribayev and Amie Ferris-Rotman, editing by Mark Trevelyan)

Ivan Toporischev, Moscow, exclusively for Eurovision Mania
Intars Busulis from Latvia opened the press conference that started yesterday, early in the morning. Intars answered questions in a very easy manner and told that he always behaves like this. He also added that he has some masks but he does not show them because he just does not need them. All that he needs is his natural charisma.

The cheerful climate created by the Latvian singer was further backed up by the Serbian musicians. They started to improvise straightway in the press conference room. Marco – a member of the Serbian group – has already acted at Eurovision. Last year he represented Montenegro as a song writer. He said that he likes the German song, because it sounds like something very amusing from the 90-s. Marco also likes Norway, as well as Montenegro, Slovenia, Bosnia, and Armenia.

Lidia Kopania, a Polish singer, confessed that initially she wanted to be a doctor. However, if she really were a doctor, she could hardly come to Eurovision. Lidia also remarked that she is not going to astonish the audience with open clothes and half-naked body, as it sometimes happens at Eurovision. Her act is full of good mood and encourages people not to be afraid of any changes in their lives.

When Alexander Rybak started to rehearse his act, there were so many people in the room that one could have thought that ordinary viewers were allowed to come in. These people were Eurovision staff members and journalists who came to watch the first rehearsal of the young Norwegian singer.

Alexander Rybak

Alexander Rybak. Photo (c) iBoy71

At the press conference it became obvious that not only bookmakers think that Rybak is going to win the Contest, but journalists too. Alexander did not try to conceal his joy when he heard all these compliments. He spoke to the journalists in English, and even in Russian. However, Dmitriy Shepelev, who administered the press conference, had to help Alexander with his Russian. Although Alexander Rybak was born in Belarus, most of his life he has spent in Norway.

After the press conference, Alexander gave an interview. When the journalist told that at the press conference people were laughing until they cried, Alexander said: “I hope they were laughing WITH me, and not AT me”. No doubt, they were laughing WITH Alexander.

“It is very good that the journalists here are so benevolent. Eurovision is a great thing. Everybody stops thinking about wars. Some people try to bring politics into it, but it is not right. The main thing here is music. I have a lot of free time and I want to meet Russian people. I have already met Kirkorov. Yesterday I watched a TV program about him and was thinking what a nice person he is, and here he comes and says that he is my fan”.

“Kirkorov came to “Olimpiyski” especially to meet you.” – “Really? Thank you!”

After 11 years of absence Slovakia has come back to Eurovision. The Slovaks insisted on Eurovision broadcasting in their country, because they believe that Eurovision is an integral part of European culture.

The Danish singer Brinck was the last one to rehearse his performance. In his song, called “Believe again”, he tries to convince us that we should always believe in love.

Ivan Toporischev, Moscow, exclusively for Eurovision Mania
Philip Kirkorov, a famous Russian singer, producer and Alla Pugacheva’s (Russian super-pop-star) former husband, is going to head the Eurovision jury this year.

This decision has been made by Pervyi Kanal (“First Channel”, the leading TV channel in Russia). Pervyi Kanal is the key-organizer of the Eurovision show in Russia this year. Besides Kirkorov, there are going to be five more judges in the Eurovision jury. Their names will become known on the 5th of May.

Philip Kirkorov Heads the Eurovision Jury

This year the voting rules have been changed. Previously, the winner used to be chosen by European TV viewers only. The voting procedure is not going to be like this anymore. The new rules presuppose that the winner will be chosen by the television audience AND by the jury consisting of music professionals.

Interestingly enough, the judges used to choose the winner of the Eurovision Song Contest up to 1997. Then that practice was stopped, and the TV audience became the only judge, so to say. This year the professional jury has been brought back to Eurovision. It happened after Dima Bilan won the contest in Belgrade in 2008, and Moscow was proclaimed the host of the next Eurovision.

The Eurovision Semi-Finals are going to take place in Moscow on the 12th and 14th of May. The Final is going to take place on the 16th of May, in Olimpiyski (“Olimpic”) Sports Center in Moscow.

Eurovision: Olimiyski Sports Centre in Moscow

About 23 thousand people are expected to arrive in Moscow to watch the live Eurovision Final Show. This year Russia is represented by Anastasia Prihodko, a Ukranian girl who won the Fabrika Zvezd Show (“Star Factory”, a Russian TV show analogous to American “Star Academy”).

Eurovision 2009 Moscow: Stage Project

However, there are people who might feel annoyed because of all this Eurovision fever. These are Russian football fans. The Russian sports newspaper Sport-Express says that the football match between the Moscow team “CSKA” and “Zenith” from St. Petersburg has been postponed. This match is a part of the ninth round of the Russian National Championship. It was supposed to take place early in the morning on the 17th of May. However, the time of the match has been changed, the new time being 8.00 p.m.  Can you guess, what was the reason? The answer is obvious. The 16th of May is the date of the Eurovision Final. And the match has been postponed in order to give the Moscow policemen enough time to rest before they start their duty at the football match.

The Eurovision Final will take place late in the evening, on the 16th of May. The Song Contest will be take place in Olimiyski Sports Centre in Moscow, while the match “CSKA”-“Zenith” is going to take place in Luzhniki, another huge Moscow stadium. A lot of Moscow policemen will ensure security at the Eurovision Final. The football match is going to take place the day after the Song Contest. This match will require the same or even bigger level of security. And in order to provide the sufficient amount of police forces for the “CSKA”-“Zenith” match, it has been decided to postpone the match in order to give the policemen more time for having rest.