More than 30,000 Céline Dion fans have gathered in Paris for the Canadian singer’s long-awaited return to performing on Saturday night – four years after she revealed her diagnosis of stiff person syndrome, a rare neurological condition. Thousands more people without tickets have flocked to a series of giant karaoke events across France to belt out Dion’s famous power ballads, in celebration of the star’s health stabilising enough for her to return to the stage. Paris’s city hall (Hôtel de Ville) organised a free outdoor karaoke for 10,000 people on Friday night as a giant sing-along to hits such as Dion’s My Heart Will Go On, which featured in the Oscar-winning film Titanic and became the second-bestselling single by a woman in music history.
Emmanuel Grégoire, the mayor of Paris, said the capital’s giant street karaoke would honour Dion as “an artist of the people” and a great “unifier” in France. Dion, who grew up the youngest of 14 children in a small town near Montréal in French-speaking Quebec, has a massive fanbase in France. Her French-language ballads are regularly the most requested songs at karaoke venues.
Dion’s popularity also stems from her life story: from an upbringing in a poor Quebec family, singing as a child at her father’s piano bar, to her massive stadium gigs. Dion, 58, announced in 2022 that she had been diagnosed with the incurable autoimmune disorder, stiff-person syndrome. She took a break from performing, later describing how the condition meant she had suffered muscle spasms so strong that her ribs were broken.
She told journalists there were times she could not walk. In the 2024 documentary I Am: Céline Dion she provided insight into the severity of her pain from the condition, including having a seizure. The content of Dion’s series of concerts at the Plenitude arena in La Défense, west of Paris – the biggest indoor concert venue in Europe – have been kept secret.
The singer told fans outside her hotel that she was being careful to protect her health, travelling to and from her hotel only to rehearse and greeting waiting fans from a safe distance. Dion told the crowd that the concerts would be longer than her usual performances and advised them to wear comfortable shoes. Usually in France, Dion would sing a set mostly made up of her French-language hits – her 1995 album D’eux became the biggest-selling Francophone album of all time.
But with Paris currently her only venue, many fans are coming from North America and across the world, so English-language hits will also feature. In April, about 9 million people had registered for the pre-sale ticket lottery. The concerts swiftly sold out.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
