Fire and water mix as Jess Mauboy ignites the Eurovision stage

Jessica Mauboy has made her unofficial debut in competition at the 63rd annual Eurovision Song Contest.

The 28-year-old Darwin-born singer has completed her first rehearsal on the stage of Altice Arena in Lisbon, Portugal, ahead of next week's semi-final and final.

The first rehearsal is the most difficult one to measure because, for the most part, performers are saving their energy for next week's in-competition semi-final and final.

But a soft-step approach may have been strategically unwise for Mauboy; analysts who had initially inched up her odds towards a potential win finished today's rehearsal a little less certain.

Online, the fans – particularly the Eurovision cognoscenti, and adjusting for the prevailingly negative sentiment that fuels most social media platforms – fanned her with cautious praise.

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One school of prevailing thought has Mauboy positioned with Israel's Netta, France's Madame Monsieur and Norway's Alexander Rybak in a possible "top four" finish.

Mauboy is singing We Got Love, which she co-wrote with songwriters Anthony Egizii and David Musumeci. The song, Mauboy told Fairfax Media, is "strong with a simple message".

"It hits hard at you, to make you feel the most comfortable, and it moves you in such a way that you physically don't even have to be moved, it's like an in-body experience," she told Fairfax Media earlier this year.

Egizii and Musumeci previously collaborated on Dami Im's Sound of Silence, which took Australia to a stunning second place at Eurovision in 2016; the pair also co-wrote last year's song, Isaiah Firebrace's Don't Come Easy.

Australia's head of delegation to the competition, Paul Clarke, said this year Australia had paid particular attention to how Mauboy's performance was placed on the Eurovision stage.

"Eurovision is a much different stage, it's a stage about being yourself and being allowed to be who you want to be," Clarke says.

"Eurovision has to be unique, it has to be surprising, and it has to make your heart think. That's who wins it, male or female, whatever country they come from."

Once the competition kicks into its final phase next week each song will be performed four times – a rehearsal, a technical rehearsal, which is scored by the jury, a daytime pre-show, and the televised prime-time show, where the TV audience vote – at both the semi-final and final.

Those technical rehearsals, particularly the second and fourth of the four, are critical as they are the performances scored by the jury and audience, respectively. The last of the four is the live telecast which will be aired around the world, and in Australia by SBS.

This week's rehearsal is a more freeform exercise; it is the first time performers are on the Eurovision stage, and performers and delegations are given a longer window in which to work on the technical specifics of the performance.

For the most part, the first rehearsal is concerned less with the song itself as it is with physical staging. It is not uncommon for delegations to make tweaks to songs while the performance is being bedded down on the stage.

With 43 countries performing, however, time on the Eurovision stage is limited.

The rehearsal window for Australia on Tuesday was just 30 minutes; by next week those rehearsal windows will have been narrowed to just five minutes per country.

Clarke is confident that Mauboy has on her hands a winning song.

"I love the start of the song particularly, because when the song opens it feels to me like that moment where Beyonce's in the silhouette at the Super Bowl," he says.

"There's just this power, and it's right in the middle of Jess's vocal range."

SBS also confirmed over the weekend that the network's business newsreader Ricardo Goncalves would serve as spokesperson; that is, Goncalves will announce Australia's scoring during the grand final live cross to each country.

Goncalves, a Portuguese-Australian, was chosen because of his ties to the host country, SBS said.

"Boa sorte Lisboa e boa sorte Jessica Mauboy," Goncalves said. Translation: "Good Luck Lisbon and good luck Jessica Mauboy."

SBS also confirmed the composition of the Australian Eurovision jury, which scores other countries based on their full technical rehearsal performance. The jury vote accounts for 50 per cent of all scores, with the balance coming from audience "televoting".

Australia's 2018 Eurovision jury will be chaired by music journalist Richard Wilkins and is composed of Double J host Zan Rowe, comedian/musician Jordan Raskopoulos, Australian hip hop artist L-Fresh The Lion and music executive Millie Millgate.

The 2018 Eurovision Song Contest will broadcast exclusively on SBS from May 9 to 13.

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Michael Idato is a Senior Writer based in Los Angeles for The Sydney Morning Herald.

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