PARIS - There really was only one gesture that seemed appropriate to Francesca Schiavone after she became the first woman from Italy in more than a half-century to reach the French Open semifinals.

So Schiavone knelt down on the red clay of the main stadium at Roland Garros, pursed her lips and planted a kiss on the court.

“It was a ’Thank you,”’ she explained in Italian. “I was quite willing to eat some clay.”

Playing on Court Philippe Chatrier for the first time, the 17th-seeded Schiavone was close to perfect Tuesday and upset No. 3 Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark 6-2, 6-3 to earn her first trip to the semifinals of a Grand Slam tournament in 39 attempts.

Asked to describe how she felt right when the match ended, Schiavone replied in English, “In that moment, you remember many things from when you were young. Is special, because is your space, is your time, is your opportunity. I felt alone, but with all the love around me. ... It’s like if I ask you, ’How did you feel when you married?’ You say, ’It’s not easy to explain.”’

In Thursday’s semifinals, Schiavone — it’s pronounced skee-ah-voh’-nay — will meet No. 5 Elena Dementieva, who came back to beat No. 19 Nadia Petrova 2-6, 6-2, 6-0 in an all-Russian matchup. Petrova eliminated Venus Williams in the fourth round, but she faded against Dementieva and blamed a left leg injury.

“I was not moving properly,” Petrova said. “I was not able to chase all the balls.”

Dementieva was hampered, too, and had her right thigh taped during a 17-minute break for both players to get treatment during the first set on a damp, cool afternoon.

“It was a very difficult match. The conditions were not easy for anybody,” Dementieva said. “It was obvious we played with minor injuries today.”

In Wednesday’s women’s quarterfinals, No. 1 Serena Williams will play No. 7 Samantha Stosur of Australia, and No. 4 Jelena Jankovic of Serbia will meet unseeded Yaroslava Shvedova of Kazakhstan.

Over the final two sets of her quarterfinal, Dementieva won 30 of 40 points on her serve — and three of the 10 she dropped were on double-faults.

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She hasn’t been to the semifinals at Roland Garros since 2004, when she was the runner-up in Paris and at the U.S. Open.

That six-year wait must seem rather quaint to Schiavone — and her country. Not only is she the first Italian woman since Silvia Lazzarano in 1954 to make it this far at the French Open, she’s also the first to reach the semifinals at any Grand Slam event in the Open era, which began in 1968.

Consider this, for a contrast: Dementieva gives Russia a semifinalist at Roland Garros for the eighth year in a row.

“I’ll tell you the truth: I can’t grasp the historical nature of what I did,” Schiavone said. “But the importance of this victory, in itself? Yes.”

She had been 0-3 in Grand Slam quarterfinals, and hadn’t been to that stage at Roland Garros since 2001.

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“It’s been so many years,” Schiavone said.

At 29, she was the oldest woman to make the last eight this year, and in the 19-year-old Wozniacki, she was playing the youngest competitor still playing.

Schiavone won by limiting her mistakes, repeatedly putting shots right where she wanted to — she compiled a 25-10 edge in winners — and by mixing speeds to keep Wozniacki off-balance.

“She’s definitely a difficult player to play against, because she plays with a lot of spin,” said Wozniacki, the runner-up at last year’s U.S. Open. “She plays differently. She mix up the balls a lot. She didn’t play typical women’s tennis.”

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