By Tania Khadder
CYPRUS has made its choice for Eurovision 2003, with Stelios Constantas set to represent the island with his upbeat pop love song ‘Feeling Alive’.
Constantas was chosen by a three-member panel made up of composer Lia Vissi, lyricist Evi Proutsa and CyBC official Manios Skordis, who listened through a total of 52 entries.
The songs lyrics are entirely in English, which may seem an unlikely representative for Cyprus.
“The main reason it’s in English is that it is an international competition, and I thought the judges would vote better if they could understand the song,” Constantas told the Cyprus Mail yesterday.
The song was not, however, written specifically for the competition. It was a song he was planning to put on his upcoming album, but he finally decided to use it for the Eurovision.
The composer has been writing music for 11 years, during which he has worked with famous Greek and Cypriot artists, and released four albums.
Born and raised in Cyprus, Constantas has been living in Greece for the last few years, but is now spending some time in Cyprus to relax and prepare for the competition.
“It’s too early to get too excited, I’m just trying to prepare the song. I will go to Greece to rearrange it because that’s where I wrote it.
“I believe in it very much, so I hope that it will score well in the contest,” he added.
The 2003 Eurovision Song Contest will take place on May 24 in Riga, Latvia.
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
