Eva Rivas
Armenians have picked the participant that will represent their country at a popular Eurovision song contest to be held in Norway in May.
Eva Rivas, a 22-year-old native of Rostov-na-Donu in southern Russia, won the Eurovision-2010 national selection final that took place at the Opera House in Yerevan February 14, 2010.
Rivas’s upbeat Apricot Stone song was chosen as the best among the songs performed by the nine contestants of the show broadcast live by the Armenian Public Television. The final selection reflected the opinion of a professional panel of judges and the SMS vote by the TV audience.
Rivas was born on July 13, 1987 in Rostov-na-Donu, Russia, to an Armenian mother and an Armenian-Greek-Russian father. Her real name is Valeriya Reshetnikova-Tsaturyan. She left Rostov in 2006, and soon adopted her Greek great-grandmother’s name, Eva Rivas, as her stage name.
According to her website, from 1996 to 2004 she was a soloist in the Arevik ensemble in Rostov, through which she earned recognition, awards, and medals. In 2003, she graduated from Image Elite, a modeling studio. She has earned titles such as “Little Beauty of Rostov,” “Golden Voice of Rostov,” “Miss Pearl of Don,” and while in Yerevan, “Vice-miss of the Caucasus.” After leaving Arevik, Eva continued to enter contests, and in 2008, signed a contract with Armenian Production. She gained even more popularity when in 2009 she chose to sing Sayat Nova’s “Tamam Ashkharh” at the Tashir 2009 Music Festival. That same year, Eva released a music video for “Tamam Ashkharh,” which was directed by Bookhadir Yuldeshev and shot in Armenia, Afghanistan, Algeria, and Uzbekistan (watch video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXb2dteSFyk). She has also appeared in Armenian TV shows.