The pressure on the host nation to deliver at Eurovision is real. Riding a wave of joy following their first Eurovision win, Portuguese fans want to keep a good thing going. And today Cláudia Pascoal and Isaura did them proud with an atmospheric performance that tugged on heartstrings through simplicity.
Cláudia is in a world of her own in this performance as the camera zooms in tight, showing her manifold expressions, gorgeous eyes and bright pink hair. Behind her we see gorgeous lanterns that provide warm accents, reflecting the love and fond memories that her character has for her deceased grandmother. It’s incredibly straightforward and it is. And that gives this performance a clarity of vision that’s easy to access and take in.
Vocally she nailed this. Her voice carried strength and vulnerability in equal measure, leaving us craving for more.
Cláudia Pascoal — “O jardim”: Reviews and Reactions
Portugal: First rehearsal at Eurovision 2018
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Portugal: First press conference 2018
Video coming soon
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Photo: Eurovision.tv (Andres Putting)
Deserve to win again or at least top 5 for sure! Simple is beautiful
Go Portugal the winner!
I vould say divine! So good, soo beautiful! On of the best ones… fo me the best one!
Magical song… I got it like millions do… 😉
I still don’t get this song. Staging wise It just comes across as a bit am-dram.
I keep pairing this with the Lithuanian song, and Lithuania have the stronger song / presentation in my opinion.
I really think Portugal cam make it twice. The song is just… MAGICAL
Portugal en las grandes ligas!
The winner
#1 PORTUGAL
Portugal just WOW! Beautiful
My #1 PORTUGAL so sublime.
My #10. I do think Portugal will finish in the top 10 again.
Impressive rehearsal! The whole thing just works wery well! Powerful voice and delicate! I love PORTUGAL song!
I like the song very much but the girl with the pink hair looks like she escaped from the mental hospital with that white sheet on her. 😀
I don’t like what Isaura is doing. She said she wanted to be modest and discreet, that is not a duo like San Marino, but now she is more visible than Jenny B. I guess Luisa Sobral made songwriters want to be stars on stage. Is great that you can write a song, but it doesn’t mean you are good on stage.
Yeaaaah! She’d better stay sitting. I liked it when she turned her back to the audience. Now it seems another San Marino.
Justice for Suzy! (you know what I mean)
PorTWOgal
I called it here first (many will be butthurted seeing a repeat from a little country)
Doubt Portugal will be able to reach a good spot again. The song needs more than one listen through to really get “stuck” It is different from Salvador where you didn’t need to get it, it was full of emotions. This doesn’t pack the same punch
Will we wait another 60 years for a Portuguese win?
Well, usually the winning country is not trying to win again second year in a row, unless its a very rich country. I actually still don’t get why Portugal won, but whatever.
Love this song, my #3. The snippet doesn’t look promising, but there’s intimancy and you can only feel that with the camera shots. I think the juries will appreaciate this, at least the ones who know something about music (hopefully we’ve got more of them this year).
amazing staging! Totally different from the others entries
Decent entry from host country, follows the footsteps of Salvador, beautiful song (don’t like the outfit though)
They said that they wont dress like this on the shows, that this was just a technical rehearsal.
Her clothes looked good, but I don’t think it will be the final outfit. I do want to see her wearing sth confortable and wavy. It was beautiful.
It’s not the final outfit, as you can see Isaura is wearing very casual clothes.
Isaura is literally in a Nirvana t-shirt.
Highly doubt these are their final outfits
I think that this song would get a better result in the final if it was sent throu the semi. This is a song you need to listen to more than one time to fall in love whith in my opinion and that won’t be the case for most people that will vote. I didn’t like it at first. But when I read the text in english I reaaly changed my mind. That wasn’t the case whith Sobral last year. He deliverd the song and emotions, didn’t have to understand. The same whith Hungary last year. But I think this… Read more »
Yes I agree with you that this song will suffer from not going through the semi, if it would qualify. I also agree that English could be a better option. Actually Isaura’s work is exclusively in English. So I was a bit disappointed when I found out that she had done a song in Portuguese, although I fell in love with intimidiately. Thanks for the good whishes and good luck to Sweden.
Like we don’t have enough songs in english….. This is not englishvision sorry for you.
Nicolas, I aggre. Love to listen to songs in other languages than english. My favorites last year was Hungury, Portuagal and France. But in my opinion boath france and portugal would get better results if they were in english this year because of their wonderful lyrics that we miss that don’t understand the language.
I like your song a lot, but I just write what I think would be good for the song – so you could get a better result and more people discover how great the song is. : )
Good luck
As expected, Portugal will have the most stripped down performance of the contest. Based on Wiwi’s team’s reactions, they succeeded at giving this song the sense of intimacy it deserves. If they nail the camera work like they did with Salvador, this can be a very captivating moment. Maybe too subtle for the televote, but I trust at least the juries will see the quality here. Cláudia and Isaura’s harmonies sound much better. But I also keep thinking if they really needed Isaura to be on the stage.
Hi Sabrina. I wonder that too. But on the other hand the renewed pink colour gives a certain panache to the whole act. People might remember that… I am saying that half joking half serious 🙂
Her hair will stand out even more with this dark staging, that’s for sure!
I doubt this is the outfit she will wear but Claudia looks like a rock & roll fairy. Her look is very powerful and cool. Her performance is also great.
I would remove Isaura from stage. She looks weird and distracting.
The stage looks a bit empty with the simple light effects. Even though I like it. I am waiting for the camera angles to understand it better.
Their broadcaster confirmed this is not the clothes she’ll wear.
I don’t like the look and the hair. The pink colour looked so much alive in their NF in my opinion. This looks exactly as my daughter cheep wig. Exactly.
I don’t like the dress eighter. Good that they won’t Wera the same cloathes. White is good but it looks like domething you wear when you sleep. But white is good, boath should wear that. Her partners dissaper whit the blsckcloth. Sorry, lite negative.
Please do a spell check before posting, thanks.
My pink panther. 🙂
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9OPc7MRm4Y8
Borring sonk
ttupid coment
Thank you, Angel DiMaria.