Third-time win for Ukraine at Slavic Bazaar
VITEBSK — The Ukrainian singer Natalia Krasnianska has won the top prize at Vitebsk 2007, an international competition for young performers. Before her, two other Ukrainian singers, Taisia Povalii and Ruslana Lyzhychko, won the grand prix of the Slavic Bazaar in Vitebsk — in 1993 and 1996, respectively. The 17-year-old Krasnianska won the competition with her brilliant performance of the songs “Naughty Girl” by Kateryna Komar and “Only with You” by Andrii Storozh.
Although the former schoolgirl from Yuzhnoukrainsk, a town of power-plant workers in Mykolaiv oblast, placed third at the end of the first day, the situation changed the next day. Both the audience and the contestants were looking forward to the showdown: the question was whether Krasnianska would manage to outdo the more experienced Slovenian singer Nuska and the Russian performer Rodion Rous. Natalia acquired the winning 158 points, and the jury headed by the Russian composer Kim Breitburg bestowed the highest honor on our singer. As soon as the festival’s final song was over, a host of journalists rushed backstage, and Krasnianska gave the first interview of her life.
“I am simply happy and still can’t believe that I did it,” she confessed to The Day. “I owe my victory above all to my family and my teacher Iryna Manzenko, as well as to all those who believed in me and sent me to the Slavic Bazaar competition. I felt wonderful on the Vitebsk stage: the spectators supported me and I just sang for them, forgetting that this was a competition.”
Unfortunately, the other Ukrainian participant, Valentyn Savenko, couldn’t overcome his stage fright. He performed worse on the second day of the competition, accumulating only 144 points, which dashed all his hopes for a win.
Krasnianska was followed, with a two-point margin, by Nuska and the Belarusian singer Georgii Koldun. His older brother is Dmitri Koldun, the Eurovision-2007 participant, who came sixth in Helsinki. The first-day leader, Rous, got a total of 149 points in two days. Congratulating Natalka, he joked that as a gentleman, he had ceded her first place. Other prizes went to Alina (Romania), Sebastian Pliewinski (Poland), and Ana Milenkovic (Serbia).
