Latvia start off the second half of today's rehearsals with Laura Rizzotto's Funny Girl. Red. Very red. Red all over. Her dress is beautiful and the whole thing is very simple and classy - not deviating or distracting from the song. Her vocals were sound but understated - more than likely saving herself for the next few days as it's only her first time on stage.

Hungary's the last country to rehearse before the lunch break. The lead singer, , seems to have issues with his sound yet as he regularly points at his ear pieces.

The band makes great use of the stage with both bridges and the front catwalk included. The lighting is mostly yellow / gold and the staging is as expected, just the band on stage, no-nonsense. At the instrumental part one of the guitarists does some crowd surfing, which is not always caught on camera.

Unfortunately - but expected as well - the choir at the last chorus gets lost. Quite a good reaction in the press hall for this rehearsal, personally I'm still not sure what to really think as the song is not my genre at all.

Hungary fourth on today. Waylon should probably take note of their approach in that they keep the staging in line with the genre of music performed. Crowd surfing, head thrashing, screaming - it's all here and a very simple heavy metal recipe. Likely to qualify.

Malta 1st rehearsal. Christabelle in the middle of LED screen installation. Piercing stage presence in a kitchen sink of visual effects. #Eurovision

— ESCKAZ Chris (@EsckazChris) May 2, 2018

I think there's some appeal with Malta. But in minority on that.
Bit problematic that the led screen installation covers her from camera too often. This needs work but it's more polished than nf.
Gimmicky of course but here it needs it.

One of the most spectacular performances visually. Christabelle stands between four walls that have many projections on them, or they may even be led screens that they brought. Just to name a few things that we see in there, the captives in white from the video, a black panther..

Later on we see a dancer in the box, visualizing the echoes in her head.

What I like about this performance is that even though the song is quite upbeat Christabelle is not jumping around but rather has a slow choreography.

It sounds ok for a first rehearsal, she seems to be holding back a bit for now which of course is a perfectly logical thing to do with many more performances coming up.