Eurovision Song Contest 1966


The Eurovision Song Contest 1966 was the 11th edition of the annual Eurovision Song Contest. It took place in Luxembourg City, Luxembourg, following France Gall's win at the 1965 contest in Naples, Italy with the song "Poupée de cire, poupée de son". It was the second time Luxembourg hosted the event after the 1961 edition. The contest was held at the Villa Louvigny on Saturday 5 March 1966 and was hosted by Josiane Chen.
Eighteen countries participated in the contest. All countries that took part in the 1965 edition, also took part this year.
The winner was Austria with the song "Merci, Chérie", performed and composed by Udo Jürgens, and written by Jürgens and Thomas Hörbiger. This was Austria's first victory - and Udo Jürgens third consecutive entry - in the contest. This was also the first winning song to be performed in German. This contest is also noted for its historic results for several countries. Austria who came first, Sweden who came second, Norway who came third and Belgium who came fourth all achieved their best results up until then, some of which would stand for several decades. In contrast traditional Eurovision heavyweights up to that point such as France, United Kingdom and Italy all achieved by their worst result by far up till that point, with the general public in the aforementioned countries meeting these results with a degree of consternation.
The rule stating that a country could only sing in any of its national languages was originally created in this year, possibly due to the 1965 edition's Swedish entry which was sung in English.

Location

The 1966 Eurovision Song Contest was hosted in Luxembourg City. The venue chosen to host the 1966 contest was the Villa Louvigny, which also hosted the Eurovision Song Contest 1962. The building served as the headquarters of Compagnie Luxembourgeoise de Télédiffusion, the forerunner of RTL Group. It is located in Municipal Park, in the Ville Haute quarter of the centre of the city.

Format

During the voting process, the presenter accidentally greeted United Kingdom by saying "Good night, London". She then realized her mistake and said "Good evening, London", after Michael Aspel, who was the spokesperson for the United Kingdom, at that time, responded by saying "Good morning, Luxembourg".
1966 marked the year the first ever black singer graced the Eurovision stage, Milly Scott representing the Netherlands. She was also the first singer to use a portable microphone. This was the last contest that Denmark participated in until 1978, more than a decade later.
It was also one of the first contests in which an entry was not accompanied by an orchestra. The Italian entry "Dio, come ti amo" performed by Domenico Modugno had been rearranged since its performance at the Sanremo Music Festival and officially broke the EBU rule that stated the arrangement should be finalised well in advance. During the Saturday afternoon rehearsal Modugno performed the new arrangement with three of his own musicians as opposed to the orchestra, which went over the three minute time limit. Following his rehearsal Modugno was confronted by the show's producers about exceeding the time limit and was asked to use the original arrangement with the orchestra. Modugno was so dissatisfied with the orchestra that he threatened to withdraw from the Contest. Both the producers and EBU scrutineer Clifford Brown felt it was too short notice to fly Gigliola Cinquetti to Luxembourg to represent Italy, so the EBU gave in and allowed Modugno to use his own ensemble instead of the orchestra. Despite websites and the official programme listing Angelo Giacomazzi as the conductor, Giacomazzi actually played the piano for the entry.
This year's voting was also characterised with numerous cases of "neighbourly" or "bloc" voting - a problem that would plague the contest in many future decades. Sweden for example received all its 16 points, bar one, from its Nordic neighbours - as did Finland. Denmark likewise received all its points from Nordic nations. The voting of the Nordic countries was met with booing from the Luxembourg audience. Portugal and its sole neighbour Spain exchanged maximum five points, with Switzerland and Austria - also two countries neighbouring each other - doing likewise. France was spared the indignity of no points from its micro-state neighbour Monaco. Ireland awarded maximum points to its culturally closest neighbour the United Kingdom with the Netherlands doing the same for Belgium.

Participating countries

All countries which participated in the 1965 contest returned for a second consecutive year.

Conductors

Each performance had a conductor who was maestro of the orchestra.
Two artists returned for a third time in this year's contest. Udo Jürgens from Austria whose previous participations were in 1964 and 1965; and Domenico Modugno from Italy, who last participated in 1958 and 1959.

Results

Scoreboard

5 points

Below is a summary of all 5 points in the final:
N.ContestantVoting nation
4AustriaBelgium, Luxembourg, Monaco, Yugoslavia
3SwedenDenmark, Finland, Norway
2BelgiumGermany, Netherlands
1GermanySwitzerland
1IrelandFrance
1LuxembourgSweden
1NorwayItaly
1PortugalSpain
1SpainPortugal
1SwitzerlandAustria
1United KingdomIreland
1YugoslaviaUnited Kingdom

Broadcasters, commentators and spokespersons

Spokespersons

Listed below is the order in which votes were cast during the 1966 contest along with the spokesperson who was responsible for announcing the votes for their respective country.
  1. – Werner Veigel
  2. – Claus Toksvig
  3. – André Hagon
  4. – Camillo Felgen
  5. – Dragana Marković
  6. – Erik Diesen
  7. –
  8. – Maria Manuela Furtado
  9. –
  10. –
  11. – Margarita Nicola
  12. –
  13. – TBC
  14. – Enzo Tortora
  15. –
  16. – Herman Brouwer
  17. – Frank Hall
  18. – Michael Aspel

    Broadcasters and commentators

Each national broadcaster also sent a commentator to the contest, in order to provide coverage of the contest in their own native language.