Charlotte Perrelli, Sarah Dawn Finer and programme host Gabriell Forss were mere minutes away from tragedy prior to their appearance on the popular Swedish TV show, Allsång på Skansen.
It was during filming of an episode in Norrköping that the participating artists miraculously avoided injury or an outcome even more serious. Just two minutes before Charlotte, Sarah Dawn and Gabriell were due to make their entrance, the whole stage collapsed due to appalling weather conditions. "It was sheer luck that we still hadn’t gone onto the stage, it could have had a fatal outcome", Charlotte tells Swedish tabloid Expressen.
The stage backdrop toppled over following torrential rain and a sudden gust of wind caught hold of the backdrop, causing it to fall over onto the stage area. "We’d have been standing there performing two minutes later, we hadn’t yet taken to the stage – complete chaos ensued. I can thank my lucky stars!" Perrelli continued. Following the collapse of the stage area, attempts were made to rebuild it, but the attempts were unsuccessful due to the appalling weather conditions.
Coordinators of the event were forced to face defeat because they simply weren’t able to guarantee the safety of the performers or members of the audience and to carry on with the show would have just been too big a risk. However, due to the huge turnout of people who had paid for tickets to see their favourite artists perform, abandoning the show was simply not an option for both artists and organisers, so they continued with the show but in an improvised format. Impressively, they chose to continue the show with acoustic versions of the numbers they were supposed to perform in a small gymnasium nearby. "We couldn’t possibly have predicted this turn of events and you can safely say that the filming of the programme won’t be forgotten in a hurry". The change of venue meant that people were jam packed into the gymnasium, but, according to Charlotte, this merely added to the atmosphere.
Links
Charlotte Perrelli official website
Sarah Dawn Finer official website
