From The Top
What Is Sanremo?
The Sanremo Music Festival (or to give it its full name Il Festival Della Canzone Italiana di Sanremo) has been running since 1951 as a musical contest for new songs in Italy. It takes place in the city of Sanremo. In terms of audience figures it is now the biggest television show in Italy, and a key fixture in Italian culture.
When is it on and how can I watch it?
Sanremo is broadcast nightly from Tuesday 1st February to Saturday 5th February. It starts at 20.35 Central European Time each night.
If you are in Italy you can watch Sanremo on RAI1. It is also broadcast on RAI International, a cable channel available around the world. You can also watch Sanremo online through the broadcaster’s website rai.it and the RAI Player. The geo-block normally seen on TV channels will be lifted, so the website will be available worldwide.
So this is Italy’s National Final for the Eurovision Song Contest?
Italy doesn’t hold a National Final for Eurovision in the conventional sense.
Sanremo does play a part in this process since Eurovision started in 1956. Since 2015 the winners of Sanremo have been given first refusal to represent Italy at the Song Contest, and if they decline RAI has stated it would look to other performers from Sanremo. This happened in 2016, with Stadio declining and RAI choosing Francesca Michielin. Performers now have to state in advance if they will go to Eurovision if they win.
About The Show
When does the show finish?
The first four nights (Tuesday to Friday) are scheduled to run for five hours. The final night on Saturday is scheduled to run a little longer at five hours fifteen minutes.
Why is it so long?
Sanremo is a showcase not just of the songs in competition, it is a chance to showcase the best of Italy as a whole. Stepping out on the stage at the Ariston Theatre is the equivalent of a command performance with the best of Italy beside you. There’s a lot of Italy to celebrate each year, and as the viewing figures show the Italian public want Sanremo to be this long.
When do we hear the songs?
Sanremo keeps the songs private until they debut on the show. The first show on Tuesday will see 12 of the songs presented on stage, while the remaining 13 songs will be heard first on Wednesday.
Thursday night will see all 25 songs performed in a single show, while Friday night is covers night as the artists sing different songs along the same theme – for 2022 this is iconic songs from the 60s, 70s, or 80s; and in an unusual step non-Italian language songs will be allowed.
Saturday night we do it all again, all 25 songs, with an even bigger bill of stars around the songs, and we find the winner.
How does the voting work?
Take a deep breath…
On Tuesday and Wednesday night, a jury of the media will be used; a third will be from the world of print media and TV, a third from radio, and a thor from online. The exact scores will not be published but at the end of the two shows the rankings will be announced.
Thursday night is a public vote; half will be a televote and half will be a demographically balanced jury of a few hundred members of the public (this is the demoscopic jury). These votes will be combined with Tuesday and Wednesdays votes, and a new ranking will be announced at the end of the show.
Friday night, covers night, is one third televote, one third the combined press jury (formed in the same way as Tuesday and Wednesday night), and a third by the demoscopic jury. All of those votes, and the existing votes, are going to be averaged out for the Friday night ranking.
Finally, Saturday night takes place over two stages. The first will be just the televote to find the top three performers. They will go into a superfinal, with the voting reset. Our final winner will be decided by a vote made up of one third televote, one third press, and one third demoscopic.
The Myths Of Sanremo
Who are all these people that aren’t singing?
Showcasing Italy does not just mean showcasing music. Sanremo has a long history of celebrating many areas of Italian life, from the work of rescue services and health professionals, to personal milestones and notable achievements.
To offer one example, it’s probably a given that at some point the Euro 2022 winning team will be acknowledged. Depending on Covid restrictions this may be by VT, but I’m confident it will happen.
Wait, is that an orchestra I see and hear?
Yes it is! Not only does Sanremo still have an orchestra stage right, but there’s a full house band stage left, and performers have brought their own instruments on stage as well.. And of course performers have the choice of using a backing tape as well.
These songs are longer than three minutes?
Sanremo’s maximum length is four minutes, one minute longer than the Eurovision Song Contest. This can lead to some serious edits to the winning song which can turn a diamond into a disappointment, but that’s a discussion to have when May is closer.
Isn’t Sanremo meant to be a train-wreck of a show?
No, it’s just different to what many people expect.
There’s going to be a lot going on in each show, because of the daily broadcast schedule there’s less time to rehearse everything down to the second, and with so many guest the live show can be rather fluid and has to react to many more external influences
If you go into Sanremo after weeks of slick 60 minute heats from various National Finals, the leisurely pace of a five hour show, five nights in a row, is going to have a different feel to the show that may leave you off-balance.
What’s with all the flowers?
Sanremo is known as the city of flowers, and the Mercato del Fiori – the flower market – is one of the largest flower markets in the country. So you’ll see lots of flowers around the stage, and lots of flowers and bouquets for all the performers and guests.
Those stairs look dangerous.
You mean the stairs at the back where almost everyone introduced has to give a little wave and then gracefully walk down? Yes, they are, and there have been numerous incidents over the years of trips, falls, and heels getting caught.
The stairs are very much part of Sanremo, and it would be a brave stage designer who decided to remove them.
Actually, the stage looks lovely…why couldn’t we just have Eurovision at the Ariston?
With a listed capacity of 2000 split over two tiers, the Ariston Theatre is really, really small for a major event. RAI’s camera team know how to use the space and capture the visual majesty through the lens, but the Eurovision Song Contest has moved beyond these classic spaces.
Sanremo did put in a bid for Eurovision 2022, but that proposal used the Mercato dei Fiori di Sanremo, which would have allowed an audience of around 5000, more than the Ariston but still short of the requested capacity by the EBU.
What we do have in Turin is the stage design team that has worked on previous Sanremo stages, so you can comfortably think of the Eurovision 2022 stage as an evolution of the original.
Surviving Sanremo
Do I need to watch all of it?
Lots of people do and enjoy the marathon, but lots of people just drop in throughout the week because that works for them. Just the Saturday night show will let you hear all the songs and experience the Italian culture. You could watch Thursday to hear the songs for the first time, and Saturday with some familiarity; Friday night to meet the performers then Saturday for your first listen of the songs; or any other combination.
Do I need to pay attention to all of it?
Again, lots of people do, but the beauty of Sanremo is that it works beautifully if you are mentally dipping in and out through each evening, letting the experience wash over you.
Watching Sanremo is more like a Cricket match or Baseball game, short bursts of energy followed by sitting back, chatting with friends, enjoying a drink, and maybe the occasional slice of cake.
How do I follow it online through the week?
As mentioned, you can watch the livestream through the online RAI Player at raiplay.it.
You can also watch the full show again through the RAI Player, and clips of each song’s performance (as well as notable guest spots) will be available.
RAI’s YouTube channel will carry the majority of these clips and other Sanremo features; be quick though, in previous years the videos are only online for a few weeks before being removed.
How do I follow along during the show?
If your Italian is good enough, pretty much every Italian branch of the media will talk about Sanremo. On the morning of the first show, RAI’s media tracker reports 345 articles published that day in the mainstream Italian press.
During the show the hashtag light up over all of the social media networks; I’m starting with #sanremo2022 as the main hashtag, closely followed by #sanremo.
If you’re looking for Twitter accounts to follow, then the majority of the Eurovision community will be covering the festival in some form, so head over to our Twitter Bot at ESC Buzz that gathers the big headlines and stories being discussed.
We’ll also call out @Sanremo_en, a fan account that brings you all the news during the day and live tweets during the shows.
What’s all this ‘Allora’ everyone is tweeting?
Ah yes, you might spot ‘allora’ popping up in the timeline. Strictly speaking, many translate it into English as “so”, “well”, or even “uhm.” it’s a versatile word that really needs context around it to give it a meaning.
Thanks to Eurovision Again’s re-broadcast of Italy’s hosting of the Eurovision Song Contest in 1991, the community experienced the stop-start nature of the voting sequence as host Toto Cutugno filled the dead air with … rather a lot of “allora”. And as the 1991 Contest moved from being a distant memory into a lived experience during the lockdown, “allora” was adopted as an expressive moment, almost like punctuation, on social media.
What’s Next?
Enjoy the show!