Welcome to the last day of open rehearsals for the 2011 Eurovision Song Contest! After today, we’re into dress rehearsal territory, with the first full run-through of semi-final 1 starting at 15:00 CET tomorrow.

In terms of our coverage over the next week, esc-chat.com will be there to report song-by-song on the first dress rehearsal of each show – so that’s the first semi-final on Monday afternoon, the second semi-final on Wednesday afternoon and the final on Friday afternoon.

Above and beyond that, I’ll be providing you with the rest of the press centre gossip and other news, while Felix settles into Düsseldorf life and reports on the fan parties and other events going on around our host city.

For now, though, sit back, relax and enjoy our live updates from Slovenia through to Spain!

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Spain is happy-clappy nonsense, and we wouldn’t have it any other way. The dance routine is busy but engaging – needless to say, half of EuroClub already knew it last night, and not just the attention-seeking Israeli gays who seem to think people came to Düsseldorf just to watch them mince around on stage, and not particularly well at that – and the staging is colourful, with some lovely fireworks accompanying the last chorus and generally transmitting the party vibe to all and sundry. And speaking of parties, I’m off out for the night – see you tomorrow for the first dress rehearsal run-through for semi-final 1!

While we’re waiting for Spain to conclude the day’s proceedings, Loukas and Amaury are busy sniffing each other’s bottoms (figuratively, you understand!) in the fan lounge tracked by dozens of hungry fanboys, and I’m not ashamed to be one of them – see below! I’d just like to take this opportunity to thank all of you for your visits so far – it’s been a busy but extremely rewarding week, and I hope we’ve managed to bring you a bit closer to the action. As a fairly young site, any drum-beating you can do for us would be greatly appreciated, from passing the www.esc-chat.com link on to your friends through to “liking” our articles on Facebook (which you can do at the bottom of each page). Thanks!

Honestly, impending burnout isn’t the reason why I’ve been saying “basically the same as before” a lot over the last few days, but it may play its part. Either way, Germany is no different to what we saw yesterday, und das ist auch gut so. One aspect I realy like is the camera shots that leave Lena and the backers at the bottom of the picture while accentuating just how tall the arena and the screens are – although there are plenty of close-ups of New Sassy Confident Lena too, so there’s no risk of the singer getting lost among the sheer scale of it all. A solid rehearsal, and with the song being far from the most demanding vocally, it’s not as if she has to bring her A-game until Saturday night anyway. “Danke!”, Lena says happily as she leaves the stage. Bitte sehr.

And so to the United Kingdom. Loukas Giorkas rocked up behind us while Blue were rehearsing and tapped his feet for a while then asked us what we thought. I don’t know about him, but they sound good to me – and they’re looking decent too. My main concern is the first minute: things I don’t think work particularly well are the way the routine starts with only Duncan and Lee visible (and some way apart), the initial view of the big screens in the background (though I think they prove their worth in the end) and the tweak they’ve made to the first chorus, where the backing track drops out for a few beats – it seems unnecessary to me, though maybe they’re planning an as-yet-unseen pyro or something. The momentum picks up throughout the song, though, and as a well-known act (see Loukas’s interest above) I think they benefit from the fact that people will stay tuned a bit longer and give them a bit more time than they might for someone they’ve never seen before. All in all, a satisfactory day at the coalface, I’d say.

OK, we’re back after a terrific day of footie in the sunshine! Evidence below… Pink of forehead and full of beer, it’s time to catch up on what we’ve missed. Latvia I caught before leaving, and I still think it works rather well, though some of the close-ups are… well, a bit too close-up. Denmark I’m told was perfectly solid, Ireland as chaotic-but-cynical as ever. I got back for the final run-through of France, which still looks and sounds terrific, and Amaury has been charming the pants off everyone in the fan lounge area of the press centre today. And then there was Italy – a more or less identikit professional performance by Gualazzi each time, although he did risk opening his eyes once or twice! Off for a beer-absorbing sarnie before Blue hit the stage, then…

Slight change of plan – I’ve just been gifted a ticket for this afternoon’s Fortuna Düsseldorf match at the temporary stadium next to the Esprit Arena (the team were evicted for their last three games of the season because of ESC), so I shall be taking that in – meaning I’ll miss the Danish, Irish and French rehearsals. Two of those three are likely to be largely the same as we’ve seen them before anyway, so it’s only really Jedward that demand a bit more attention – I’ll try to watch a video afterwards and see what I reckon. Should be back in time for Italy, so until then!

It’s fortunate that freedom of speech is thin on the ground on Belarus, because I have no opinions on this performance that are particularly worth communicating. It comes, it exists for three minutes, it goes away again, and hopefully that’ll be the last of it.

The best word I can find for Estonia is “messy”. They only got through two run-throughs in their 30 minutes (most countries are doing three if not four), and it’s clear that they’re still struggling to capture the dance routine on camera as well as they’d like. I maintain that the vocals are iffy, though it seemed to hold together a bit better than the other day, and Getter frankly looks a bit gormless on camera. That said, if and when it does all come together, it’ll be just fine – I still don’t see this being a Shock Non-Qualifier. It ain’t going to do much in the final at this rate though.

Romania, like Portugal the other day, really didn’t need to bother turning up – David’s vocals are sitting tight, the routine was already nailed down during the first rehearsal session, and the only obvious benefit to today’s run-throughs would be to familiarise the band with the huge arena environment. Well, that and to attune the cameras to his stripey trousers. A professional performance – gut instinct says 8th-ish in the semi and 18th-ish in the final, but we’ll see.

Slovenia is looking and sounding pretty good. Someone drew a comparison with Norway 2008, and it struck me that there’s some truth in that, for all the song is considerably darker and more “difficult”. I could easily see it landing a mid-top 10 placing, but since it’s Slovenia, I could equally see it staying put in the semi-final. If it is the latter, though, it won’t be Maja’s performance that’s to blame.