Contest Overview
The presenters were Gigliola Cinquetti and Toto Cutugno, the latter having 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. (English and French are, and in the Eurovision Song Contest it is mandatory to provide commentary in at least one of those languages)
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 entry restrictions.
Read more about this topic: Eurovision Song Contest 1991
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