Estonia is still one of the favorites to win and her glamour continues to charm people around. Similary to the first rehearsal, Elina Nechayeva delivered a strong performance at her second rehearsal in her magical and huge dress. Take a look in our gallery or watch her performance in Eurovision Village.

Estonia is competing in the first semi-final as song number 9. The country is represented by Elina Nechayeva and the song La Forza, which is written by Ksenia Kuchukova, Mihkel Mattisen, Timo Vendt and Elina herself.

Eurovision Village

Gallery

Second rehearsal

Opinions expressed during our second rehearsal coverage are personal from the mentioned writers.

Pedro, Portugal (in the press center) – Elina just keeps on winning me over each time. Nonetheless, I must confess I wasn’t too impressed with her first rehearsal as I felt some vocals weren’t exactly on point. During this second rehearsal, nonetheless, not only she sounds better but looks as good. She is a charming woman and it’ll be shocking if Estonia doesn’t qualify. Her smile belongs to an angel and when she smiles (and sings like she does), everything feels right. Surely one of my favorite entries this year.

Josef Staif, Czech Republic (from the arena) – Elina keeps the same quality level from Eesti Laul, through first rehearsals to the second rehearsals. Rightfully, she stays as my winner this year. It would be nice to see an opera song to finally win at Eurovision and I would be more than happy to go to Tallinn next year… And, at least, those expensive dress would not be in vain.

First rehearsal

After so much controversy whether Estonia would be able to finance the so desired dress, it did make its way to the Altice Arena stage and it does feature fantastic and eye-popping special effects.

Elina’s performance is quite similar to what she presented in the Eesti Laul 2018 performances and this even includes hand movements and camera angles which could steal a bit of excitment for the Eurovision stanbase as they’ve seen it and repeated the national selection performance. Surrounded by blue and red lights, the dress keeps on changing its roll of images while Elina continues to smile gracefully until the very end of the song.

Vocally speaking, there are slight differences from the national performance as Elina hasn’t yet found the perfect key for it, something she surely will pull off.

Nonetheless, the question remains: how would Estonia pull off their staging without the dress?

How Elina Nechayeva was selected

On the third of March, Estonia selected their Eurovision participant. Through two semi-finals, a total of ten entries had made it to the final of Eesti Laul 2018. In the final, three of the entries qualified for a super-final. Elina had in the first round won the 12 points from both jury and televoting. In the super-final, only the TV viewers decided.

With stunning 70% of the votes, Elina Nechayeva won a landslide victory with 2015 Eurovision participant Stig Rästa as runner up.

Estonia at the Eurovision Song Contest

A pre-selection round in place before the contest in 1993 sorted the Estonian entry out, and as such the country had to wait until 1994 to get its debut. Silvi Vrait represented the country, but failed to reach the final. Whether or not it was due to the result, Estonia didn’t take part in 1995, but since 96′ they have been a steady Eurovision participant.

Since the introduction of semi-finals in 2004, Estonia has failed to reach the final a total of nine times. But before that, the country had already won once, in 2001 where Tanel Padar and Dave Benton made most of Europe clap and sing a long to Everybody.

In 2015, Elina Born & Stig Rästa finished 7th at the contest, but they were followed up by two entries that didn’t reach the final.