Bocelli and son wow crowd at Sanremo

(ANSA) - Sanremo, February 6 - Italy's beloved Sanremo song festival and competition kicked off on Tuesday night, where the highlight was an emotional performance by the blind tenor Andrea Bocelli.
    Bocelli, accompanied by his 21-year-old son Matteo, sang the song with which he debuted at Sanremo 25 years ago, and the audience responded with a standing ovation.
    Viewership reached its highest point for the evening during Bocelli's performance, with 15.6 million people tuning in to see the opera singer and his son on stage at the Ariston Theatre.
    An average of 10.086 million viewers watched State broadcaster RAI's flagship Rai1 channel on Tuesday night, 49.5% of the overall audience share. This is down on the average of 11.603 million viewers of the first night last year - 52.1% of the audience share. The long-standing festival, this year in its 69th edition, is once again in the hands of singer-songwriter Claudio Baglioni, who was also the artistic director last year. Baglioni on Wednesday said he was satisfied with the debut evening's results, and Rai1 director Teresa De Santis said it was "one of the best in the past five years".
    De Santis said she was particularly pleased with the showing among the 15-24 age demographic, where the share reached a high of 71%, with an average of 62.7%.
    She said it was Baglioni who managed to "bring to Sanremo those who wouldn't have seen it, an audience that doesn't go on general TV".
    The festival also attracted significant interest on social media, with a total of 2.8 million interactions on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, which De Santis said made the show "the most significant event of the season from September 2018 to now".
    The show's hosts, comic Claudio Bisio and impressionist Virginia Raffaele, were a hit with the crowd - although Raffaele, who hails from Rome, committed a gaffe by 'saluting' the Casamonica Rome crime family.
    On Wednesday evening 12 artists will compete, with performances scheduled in the following line-up: Achille Lauro, Einar, Il Volo, Arisa, Nek, Daniele Silvestri, Ex-Otago, Ghemon, Loredana Bertè, Paola Turci, Negrita, and Federica Carta and Shade.