Intro Post

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Introduction

Vicky Leandros’ victory brought Eurovision to Luxembourg for the third of four times. This time, the show took place in the Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg, which has 943 seats in the main theatre and 400 in the studio. That is a tiny audience by modern standards, the kind you might see in a smaller country’s national final. I think this gives the show an intimate feel, compared to those with grandiose arenas such as 1968 in the Royal Albert Hall. This intimate feel is further helped by the orchestra surrounding the performers in a circle, which I think looks just plain awesome. Unfortunately the show has no postcards this year. We only get a picture of each singer taken during a rehearsal with their name on the bottom to introduce each song, and they often have unflattering expressions.

Eurovision 1973 is a year of many firsts. It was the first year to have at least one female conductor (for Sweden and Israel), the first that explicitly let countries sing in any language they wanted, the first where at least one song used a backing track (“Power to All Our Friends” from the UK), and the first year where Israel participated. Austria and Malta from last year skipped this contest, meaning it had a total of 17 participating countries. Because this was Israel’s first time participating and came just a year after the horrific Munich massacre, the contest had extreme security measures in place, especially for the Israeli delegation. According to Swedish conductor Monica Dominique, two men with machine guns guarded both sides of the stage throughout the television broadcast.

The intro to the show is pretty simple: an opening film with little clips of the contestants set to an orchestration of “Après toi”, a glimpse at Vicky and Leo Leandros in the audience, then the presenter Helga Guitton introducing the show in French and English with a pinch of German and a few words in Luxembourgish. I watched the show with German commentary uploaded to YouTube just a few weeks ago, but I made sure to check out the versions of each song with strings created by awuga. The orchestra had major sound issues this year which caused the strings to be mostly inaudible on TV, although when I first watched the year I just thought the orchestra was brassier than usual.

The top three of this year are all quite iconic: Cliff Richard with “Power to All My Friends” at third place, a very famous Spanish song called “Eres tú” at second, and the winner was Luxembourg with “Tu te reconnaîtras”—the second of five times the host country won.