Chiara yesterday realised her dream to break her personal record of 1998, by placing a well deserved second place at the 50th Eurovision Song Contest and walking off with the Press Award for the best song.
Malta's ambassador at this year's contest scored 192 points with her ballad Angel, falling short by 38 points and seeing Greece's Helena Paparizou walk off with the coveted award for her racy pop song My Number One, which garnered a total of 230 points.
This is the first time that Greece has won the Eurovision after 31 years of taking part and it is also Helena's second try after taking part with her band Antique in 2001 and placing third with the song I Would Die For You.
Greek fans were ecstatic to be taking the contest home and they wildly waved their flags as Helena went back on stage and gave a second rendition of her upbeat song.
Romania's Luminita Anghel roused the crowd with her high-energy Euro-dance track Let Me Try, which saw her placing third with 158 points.
Before leaving the hotel in the evening Chiara radiated confidence and said that she was ready for the battle with Greece for first place.
"I'm all prepared," she said as she shrugged off the wishes of good luck in an attempt to remain calm and retain her frame of mind that she was just off to a rehearsal.
However, when contacted last night for a comment right after the show, her laconic reply was: "not now".
Her performance was impeccable and she had the audience in the palm of her hand as she sang alone on stage. Loud applause and cheers constantly interrupted her performance, and she rode the wave of popularity beautifully.
It was a nail-biting session in the packed Sports Palace in Kiev, as the 39 competing countries dished out points and it was only when the 24 finalists started announcing their votes that a winner started to emerge.
For the past week international bookmakers have been constantly predicting that Greece will win. However, they failed to hit the nail on the head with Malta which had been shifting between seventh and fourth place in the past days.
Malta received 12 points only from Russia and no points from eight of the 39 countries which chose their favourites through televoting. Meanwhile, Malta obtained 10 points from the UK, Norway, Israel, Denmark, Ukraine, and Ireland; eight points from Belgium, Finland, Turkey, Germany and Greece; seven points from Spain and France; six points from Cyprus and Sweden; five points from Austria, Monaco, Belarus, The Netherlands, Hungary and Latvia; four points from Iceland, Estonia, Albania and Croatia; three points from Switzerland; two points from Lithuania, Romania; and one point from Slovenia.
The Maltese panel gave 12 points to Cyprus, 10 to Latvia, eight to Israel, seven to Romania, six to Greece, five to Norway, four to the UK, three to Denmark, two to Moldova and one point to Switzerland.
Chiara is expected to return to Malta in the early morning hours of tonight on the Lufthansa flight from Munich at about 1 a.m.
Hamilton Travel made this coverage possible.