RAI, the Italian national broadcaster has unveiled the 2018 Sanremo Music Festival stage. Italy is gearing up for its celebrated annual song festival, which is set to kick off next week.

The stage

The 2018 Sanremo stage has been designed by Emanuela Trixie Zitkowsky.

Emmnuela says:

The stage is designed as an auditorium and has been conceived prospectively to expand into the Ariston Theater.  Street like wide meshes of steel build a link with the exterior paths of light. White triumphs: a purity of art. The music inside comes out thanks to these links, drawing an inspiration and a reason to exist. The architectural elements give the stage volumes to represent an urban agglomeration, a city of the future.  The music rises to new horizons through two video spirals. Vertical acoustic arcs give the sounds a universal feel.

The stage designer of the 68th Sanremo Festival sheds more light on the upcoming Sanremo 2018 epic stage at the Ariston Theatre.

She goes on to enlighten us about how the stage will blend and merge in with the light, image and architecture of the Ariston Theatre during the performances of the songs, enabling the millions of viewers at home and the 1,273 spectators in the audience to visualise and witness great show.

She goes on to add:

A thousand square meters of video and light transform the immaculate temple into a multi-colored palette. A curtain designed in four blades descends and preserves the spaces by depicting new visions through its 4,870 teardrop bulbs that recall the past but keep in the core new technologies projected into the future.

In the heart of the stage a structural flower closes the perspective as a symbol of the purity of all the arts and blossoms opening its petals of light revealing its interior: a pulsating heart that becomes an introduction to listening to music (the scale). The luminous flower spreads upwards until it reaches the white stalls occupying the proscenium and dominating the public. A volumetric pentagram where new notes give life to the zero year of Italian music as conceived by the Artistic Director.

The black mirror stage is supported by a sheet of helical sculptural elements that lie as if they were music sheets ready to spread infinite sounds.

Two side staircases open up like flower petals, embracing and introducing the white orchestra placed on two platforms that spread the notes in this futuristic stage where music plays is the main role.

Sanremo 2018

The 2018 Sanremo Music Festival will be held at the Ariston Theatre in Sanremo and will run from 6-10 February, with the Grand Finale set on Saturday 10 February.

The shows will be hosted by Claudio Baglioni and Michelle Hunziker. The contest will be aired live on Rai Uno and Rai International (via satellite).

The winner of the 2018 Sanremo Music Festival (Campioni Category) will be eligible to represent Italy at the forthcoming 2018 Eurovision Song Contest in Lisbon.

Campioni candidates

• Roby Facchinetti e Riccardo Fogli – Il segreto del tempo
• Nina Zilli – Senza appartenere
• The Kolors – Frida
  
• Diodato & Roy Paci – Adesso
  
• Mario Biondi – Rivederti
  
• Luca Barbarossa – Passame er sale
  
• Lo Stato Sociale – Una vita in vacanza
  
• Annalisa – Il mondo prima di te
  
• Giovanni Caccamo – Eterno
  
• Enzo Avitabile & Peppe Servillo – Il coraggio di ogni giorno
  
• Ornella Vanoni with Bungaro & Pacifico – Imparare ad amarsi
  
• Renzo Rubino – Custodire
  
• Noemi – Smettere mai di cercarmi
  
• Ermal Meta & Fabrizio Moro – Non mi avete fatto niente
  
• Le Vibrazioni – Così sbagliato
  
• Ron – Almeno pensami
  
• Decibel – Lettera dal duca
  
• Max Gazzé – La leggenda di Cristalda e Pizzomunno
  
• Red Canzian – Ognuno ha il suo racconto
  
• Elio & le Storie Tese – Arrivederci

Italy in Eurovision

Italy is one of the founder members of the Eurovision Song Contest having debuted in the very first contest in Lugano back in 1956. The country has won the competition twice (1964, 1990).

Italy withdrew from the event in 1997 and, after lots of convincing, the country was back in the game after a 13 year hiatus. The Italians returned with great honours in 2011 when Raphael Gualazzi came 2nd in Düsseldorf.

In 2017, Francesco Gabbani took Italy by storm and walked away with the Sanremo trophy and flew to Kyiv to represent Italy at Europe’s favorite television show.

Despite being the hot favourite to bag the Grand Prix, he achieved an honorable 6th place with his mega hit Occidentali’s Karma.