Italy in the Eurovision Song Contest 1975
| Eurovision Song Contest 1975 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Country |
 Italy | |||
| National selection | ||||
| Selection process | Internal Selection | |||
| Selected entrant | Wess & Dori Ghezzi | |||
| Selected song | "Era" | |||
| Finals performance | ||||
| Final result | 3rd, 115 points | |||
| Italy in the Eurovision Song Contest | ||||
| ||||
Italy was represented by duo Wess and Dori Ghezzi, with the song '"Era", at the 1975 Eurovision Song Contest, which took place on 22 March in Stockholm. As usual, broadcaster RAI chose both song and performers internally. Wess and Ghezzi had been singing together since 1972 and had enjoyed a string of successful records in Italy. The cadence of their performing name led many outside Italy to assume that they were husband and wife, but this was not the case.
At Eurovision
For the second consecutive year Italy had drawn the last slot in the performance order, and Wess and Ghezzi followed Sweden's Lars Berghagen onto the stage. "Era" was an unusual and distinctive Eurovision song for its time, and combining with the favourable draw, gained a good result. At the close of voting "Era" had received 115 points, with one maximum 12 from Finland and second-place 10s from five other countries, placing Italy third of the 19 entries. Only the Netherlands failed to award the song any points at all. It was a very clear third place, with Italy finishing 23 points behind runners-up the United Kingdom and 24 points ahead of fourth-placed France. In what would be the first of many examples under the 12 points system of Italian juries voting in a manner very much out of step with the rest of Europe, they awarded only 1 point to the winning song from the Netherlands and only 3 to the United Kingdom, while giving the only 12 of the night to Switzerland, who finished 6th.[1]