Home / Armenia

Eva Rivas heads to Eurovision

Russian-Armenian to represent Armenia in pan-European song contest

Published: Saturday February 20, 2010

Haik Badalian / Photolure

Yerevan - Choosing among nine finalists Armenians picked 22-year-old Eva Rivas, a tall Angelina Jolie look-alike with powerful vocals, as Armenia's next representative at the Eurovision, a popular pan-European music contest.

During February 14 national final, Ms. Rivas performed a soulful pop-folk song Apricot Stone composed by Armen Martirosian and with lyrics by Karen Kavalerian on a theme of Diasporan's longing for Armenia. 

The Russian-Armenian beat the Los Angeles-based duo Mihran and Emmy with their dance number Hey (let me hear you say)! The latter protested the outcome and their supporters speculated that public voting conducted via SMS was skewed in Ms. Rivas' favor. 

But most music fans appeared to have dismissed the protests, with Ms. Rivas emerging as a favorite well before the vote. As of this week, the Apricot Stone video clocked more than 150,000 YouTube hits with Ms. Rivas' earlier performance of Sayat Nova's Tamam Ashkhar - more than 135,000.

By comparison, top videos Emmy and Mihran's Hey! got about 70,000 hits.

As in years past, the contest was organized by Armenia's Public television and vote count was monitored by Grant Thornton Amyot auditors.

A Rostov Armenian

Ms. Rivas was born Valeria Reshetnikova to a Russian-Armenian family in Rostov-on-Don, a city with large and historic Armenian presence.

"I am 75 percent Armenian and I feel Armenian," Ms. Reshetnikova told Panorama.am in a recent interview.

According to her web site www.evarivas.com and reporting by Gazeta Dona, a Rostov newspaper, while only eight years old Lera (short for Valeria) began singing with a local Armenian ensemble Arevik that performed classical, church and pop music. Appearing in youth festivals in Russia, Lera and Arevik won numerous awards and commendations.

In addition to singing, the tall brunette with striking looks modeled and participated in a number of beauty pageants. In 2005 she was selected as runner up in the "Miss Caucasus" competition held in Yerevan.

At the same time, Ms. Reshetnikova launched her solo music career, performing one of Sayat Nova's Armenian classics at a Moscow music festival and recording several Russian-language songs.

Since leaving Rostov in 2006, Ms. Reshetnikova adopted her ethnic Greek grandmother'sname, Eva Rivas, as her stage name.

After winning a third spot at the Russian "Five stars" competition in 2007, Ms. Rivas said her goal was to sing at Eurovision. 

"I always achieve what I set out to do," she reportedly said at the time. And now Ms. Rivas has taken aim at the top spot of the Eurovision competition in Norway next May.