Televiziunea Română (TVR) held a national final to select the its entry for the Eurovision Song Contest. There were two semi-finals, one on 15 February and the second one on 22 February. The top 6 songs from each semi-final went forward to the final. The entries were selected by televoting (50%) and an expert jury (50%) which included Monica Anghel who represented Romania in ESC 2002.

The Romanian Final was held on March 1 at the TVR TV Studios in Bucharest, hosted by Kitty Cepraga & Leonard Miron. The winner was chosen by televoting (50%) and an expert jury (50%). Nicola was favourite with both the jury and televoters. Aurelian Temișan withdrew his song "Goodbye, hello, goodbye" as he didn't want to split his televotes between two songs. The song "Dominus" by Costi Ioniţă was disqualified due to similarities between it and the song "Ty prosti" by the Russian Group Hi-Fi.

Nicoleta Alexandru (born 2 January 1968), whose stage name is Nicola, is a famous Romanian singer. She is a star in her native country.

Born in Bucharest, Nicola started her solo career in 1992 and has toured widely as well as making numerous television, radio and stage appearances. In 2003, she was awarded the Woman of the Year prize by Avantaje magazine, her song "Lângă Mine" was awarded "The Song of the Year" prize by Bucureşti and Radio Actualităţi stadions; she was awarded the Mamaia and Love Song Festival trophies for the same song.

On March 1, 2003, after a huge response to her song "Don't Break My Heart" Nicola won the Romanian national selection for the Eurovision Song Contest at Riga. In the international final she came in 10th.

In 2003 she released her fourth LP, Best Of Nicola. Building on the recognition gained from the Eurovision Song Contest, the album sold more copies than expected for a Romanian artist and stayed in the Top 5 of the album charts for 6 months.

On the night of the final Nicola performed 24th in the running order, following Estonia and preceding the Sweden. At the close of the voting "Don't Break My Heart" had received 73 points from 15 countries (the highest being 12 from Russia), placing Romania 10th of the 26 entries. The 12 points from the Romanian televote were awarded to Sweden.

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Wikipedia