The Dora continued with the last step to the final in Croatia. Three acts battled for final ticket at the Dora, one act would wave goodbye to their Eurovision Song Contest dream. We will see one morer battle to raise the Dora prize next weekend.
The show took place in the HRT studios in Zagreb tonight at 20.10 CET. We were welcomed with the performance of Doris Karamatic playing Enter Sandman with harp where also the sympathic laser show was brought on. She ended her act finishing with the official intro of Eurovision Song Contest and then the hosts of the night Alexander Kostadinov and his partner Leona Paraminski appeared at the opening of the show. The participiants are started to be introduced: Jacques Houdek, Mirko Svenda-Ziga and finally… Daria Kinzer.
The first guest of the night, Danijel Popovic, take part at the show singing Julie which was at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1983 finishing 4th after all. Now it was time to announce the juries who gave positive and negative sides of the performances tonight, Josipa Lisac, Emilija Kokic and Branko Bubica. Josipa Lisac is a well known singer in Croatia who has a great musical background. Emilija Kokic was the member of Riva who won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1989 with the song Rock Me. Branko Bubica is a member of the group Maslina who participated in the Dora before. The show finally got under way after Monica Lelas from HRT Radio announced tonight’s procedure giving the numbers for televoting:
- Daria Kinzer – Zena Za Sva Vramena: The first act of the night was performed in Croatian with the style of blues and jazz. Daria’s dress was all in red and created a good combination at the stage. She performed half of the song by sitting on an old fashioned chair.
- Jacques Houdek – Dvije Duse (by Gibonni): Jacques song was a bit more pop but we couldn’t say it was an up tempo song at all. Our hero, Jacques dressed with green shirt and a black jacket. We were able to see how much the fans were enjoying with his song. He really has strong vocals.
- Mirko Svenda-Ziga – You Raise Me Up (by Branden Graham & Rolf Lovland): Probably this is the first surprise of the night hearing an classic by Mirko. Though he proved he had strong vocals on previous episodes of Dora, he couldn’t raise his voice up today. He really has many fans supporting him in the studio.
After these three performances, the jury of the night expressed their thoughts about the two participants in Croatian that we couldn’t understand in English at all. Jury members were telling their opinions about the participants, we were also able to see some recaps at the left bar on the screen, so we should all admit HRT worked very professional tonight. As it was with the previous song there was a little quiz for the participants which ended with Daria’s winning with 5/5, Jacques and Mirko scored 4/5.
We were able to hear a nice song Da Te Mogu Pismom Zvati was performed by Branko Bubica before a Dora history.
- Daria Kinzer – The Best (by Tina Turner) : Daria was back dressed all in black this time. She performed a memorable song from Tina Turner and she had her vocals stronger than her first act.
- Jacques Houdek – You Raise Me Up (by Branden Graham & Rolf Lovland): It was a bit annoying to listen the same song for the second time by another participant. Actually, Jacques was more succesfull on the vocals than Mirko’s performance, definitely brilliant!
- Mirko Svenda-Ziga – Bitanga I Princeza (by Goran Bregovic): Mirko was back to the stage with more casual suit to perform Slavian idol Goran Bregovic’s act. The song suits in his style more than You Raise Me Up actually.
The audience was asked for their favourite and we were able to hear more applauses for Mirko Svenda-Ziga.
While the phone lines were thrown open for 10 minutes, we first saw a recap of the six songs. After the recaps, Dino Merlin, one of our guest stars of the night, took part at the show with his song Love In Rewind which will represent the neighbouring country, Bosnia & Herzegovina, at the Eurovision Song Contest. Member of the former group Riva, Emilija Kokic, was at the stage after a short interview with Dino Merlin. She performed Rock Me Baby which brought the success to Yugoslavia in 1989. Croatian diva, Josipa Lisac, continued to the show performing 1000 Rastoga.
The qualifying names at the end of the night were Jacques Houdek and Daria Kinzer. The grand final of Dora will take place next saturday when the Croatian representative will be known after numerous heats.
