The healer from Poland

The contestant from Poland, Lidia Kopania, has a strong, beautiful voice and a wide range of four octaves, but she is also a multi-faceted person. Kopania told journalists that if she had not become a singer, she would choose a doctor’s profession instead. “I think that my songs treat souls. It is a salutary energy which I transfer to people,” Lydia says.

The favorite: Norwegian fairytale to come true?

Alexander Rybak, who will represent Norway, is named by bookmakers as the most likely to win the contest with his love song. The singer, born in Belarus, confided after the rehearsal that he is greatly inspired by the Ukrainian contender in the song contest, sexy Svetlana Loboda.

Rybak added that he dreams of the Ukrainian singer addressing him personally with her “Be my Valentine” song.

The Latvian story

Intars Busulis from Latvia and his crew (Copyright Alain Douit)

Intars Busulis from Latvia will sing a song about traffic jams in the Russian language. Couldn’t that possibly be the reason why the singer faced certain difficulties on his way to Moscow? On May 5 he was supposed to hold his first rehearsal at the Olympisky Arena. All was well until his train came to the Russian-Latvian border.

Russian frontier guards removed him from the train for 1,5 hours because at the checkpoint they found two different passports on the man. It required international forces from the producers of Eurovision to help Busulis get into Russia.

“I wouldn’t like to sadden the celebration and cast a shadow on the organizers. I feel perfect and am determined to win,” Busulis told journalists.

Slovakia to hit Eurovision for the first time in 11 years

This European state has simply ignored the contest for the past 11 years. But this year they came out of the shadow and sent their claim to participate in this year’s Eurovision. Singers Kamil Mikulcik and Nela Pociskova will represent their country.

17 is old enough for Cyprus

The youngest participant in Eurovision-2009, 17-year-old Christina Metaxas from Cyprus who, despite her age is already well known in her homeland. Christina has already been singing in musicals for five years. One of her latest roles was Sophie in “Mamma Mia” in the Cyprus production.

The duet Marko Kon and Milaan from Serbia (Copyright Alain Douit)

Others, whose rehearsals also took place on May 5, were singers from Denmark, Ireland, and Serbia. The song for Danish singer Niels Brinck was written by a famous pop singer from Ireland, Ronan Keating.

Ireland will be represented by Sinead Mulvey and a girls band, Black Daisy, at the song contest. The girls say they have been fans of Eurovision shows since early childhood. Now their dream has come true: they are not only present at the contest but came to Moscow to represent their country.

“With friends we even bet on the winner. And people make stacks on us,” Mulvey says.

The duet, Marko Kon & Milaan from Serbia, will present a foot-tapping song with an accordion accompaniment.

One of the soloists, Marko Kon, who is also the composer and the author of the song, says musicians have already recorded their song in six languages and are planning to continue translating and recording it in other languages.