Final 4 May 1991 Director Riccardo Donna | Conductor Bruno Canfora Executive supervisor Frank Naef | |
 | ||
Venue Studio 15 di Cinecittà
Rome, Italy Presenter(s) Gigliola Cinquetti
Toto Cutugno | ||
The Eurovision Song Contest 1991 was the 36th Eurovision Song Contest and was held on 4 May 1991 in Rome. Due to the Gulf War and mounting tensions in Yugoslavia, RAI decided to move the contest from Sanremo to Rome, which was perceived to be more secure.
Contents
This was the last event in which the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia participated. The 1992 contest saw the participation of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (comprising only Serbia and Montenegro). It was also the first time that Germany was represented in their reunited form since the East Germany joined West Germany by the German reunification.
Carola was the winner of this Contest with the song "Fångad av en stormvind". This was the third victory for Sweden, the last one being in 1984. There was a tie between Carola and France's Amina, as both had received 146 points. This necessitated a 'count-back', a tie-breaking measure introduced after the infamous four-way tie in 1969's Contest. Both Sweden and France had received four lots of 12 points, but Sweden had received five lots of 10 points to France's two, so Carola was declared the winner. This was the closest France has ever come to winning the ESC since 1977. Had today's tie-break rule been in place, France would have won in 1969 and 1991, as more countries voted for it.
Contest overview
The presenters were Gigliola Cinquetti and Toto Cutugno, Italian winners of the ESC to date, which opened the contest singing Insieme: 1992 and Non ho l'età (per amarti). Cutugno had 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 restrictions on the number of countries allowed to participate.
Voting structure
Each country had a jury who awarded 12, 10, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 point(s) for their top ten songs.
During the final vote (Italy) none of the top three contenders - Sweden, Israel and France - had received any points up until the last 12-point vote. This vote went to France and for the first time in twenty-two years, there was a tie for first place, with France overcoming a large deficit to catch up with Sweden. However, since the four-way tie of 1969, the rules had been altered to ensure a single outright winner. The first step in the procedure was to check the number of 12-point votes awarded to each country. Sweden and France were still tied. But when counting the number of 10-point votes, Sweden had more and was finally declared the winner.
If the tie occurred under modern tie-breaking rules, France would have won because it had been voted for by more countries than Sweden.
12 points
Below is a summary of all 12 point in the final:
Postcards
The singers were asked to sing a known Italian song which would then be used as a short clip for the postcard. The songs were in order: