Thea's dream fades
Next semi final to be held tomorrow
Thea Garrett's dreams were shattered last night when she failed to qualify to the final round of the Eurovision despite a very strong performance.
Appearing confident on the Oslo stage, Thea sang My Dream in eleventh place, but failed to gain enough points to be among the 10 qualifying countries that will perform at the finals on Saturday.
The countries that qualified include Bosnia Herzegovina, Moldova, Russia, Greece, Portugal, Belarus, Serbia, Belgium, Albania and Iceland.
Most of the songs had lots of energy, but others like those of Portugal, Belarus and Belgium were strong ballads.
Those that did not qualify, included Poland, whose singer Marcin Mrozinski had become very close to Thea in the past days. The others that failed to qualify were Estonia, FYR Macedonia, Slovakia, Finland and Latvia.
Thea was extremely disappointed about the result but confident that she had given her best for Malta.
Malta was not predicted to pass the semi-final round, but Thea's fans hoped she would prove the bookmakers wrong as she had done during the local Eurosong festival, where she emerged as the dark horse.
Thea looked nervous as she walked on the stage but on the first notes she burst into a flawless rendition of her song, which was cheered throughout especially by tens of Maltese fans that attended the event in the Telenor Arena in Oslo.
Eurovision fans will now turn their eyes to the next semi-final, to be held tomorrow, where a number of favourites to win the competition are competing for a place in the top 10. Among the favourites are Azerbaijan, Israel, Armenia and Denmark.
Meanwhile, the big four countries (France, Germany, Spain and the UK) together with last year's winner, Norway, have an automatic place in the final.
The actual points that each country earned last night will only be known after Saturday's final night, so as not to influence voting.
This year each country had a jury awarding 50 per cent of the votes.