PARIS —
Celine Dion made a triumphant return on Friday with a really public efficiency: the grand finale of the Paris Olympics opening ceremony from the Eiffel Tower.
Practically two years after revealing her prognosis of stiff-person syndrome, Dion sang Edith Piaf’s “Hymne à l’amour” (“Hymn to Love”) because the finale of the roughly four-hour present. Her look had been the topic of hypothesis for weeks, however organizers and Dion’s representatives had declined to substantiate whether or not she would carry out.
On a web page devoted to Dior’s contributions to the opening ceremony, the media information referred to “a world star, for a purely grandiose and magnificently good finale.”
Dion had been absent from the stage since 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic compelled her tour to be postponed to 2022. That tour was finally known as off following her prognosis.
The uncommon neurological dysfunction causes stiff muscle tissue and painful muscle spasms, which affected Dion’s capacity to stroll and sing. In June, on the premiere of the documentary “I Am: Celine Dion,” she informed The Related Press that returning required remedy, “bodily, psychological, emotional and vocal.”
“That’s why it takes some time. However completely why we’re doing this I’m already a bit bit again,” he mentioned then.
Even earlier than the documentary’s launch, Dion had taken steps towards a comeback. In February, she made one other shock look, on the Grammy Awards, the place she introduced the ultimate award of the evening to a standing ovation.
For Friday’s efficiency, Dion’s pearl-studded outfit was designed by Dior. Talking to French tv, the Paris organising committee’s director of costume and design for ceremonies, Daphné Bürki, recalled Dion’s enthusiasm for the chance.
“After we known as Celine Dion a yr in the past, she mentioned sure instantly,” Bürki mentioned.
Dion shouldn’t be French — the French-Canadian is from Quebec — however she has a robust connection to the nation and the Olympics. Dion’s native language is French, and he or she has dominated the charts in France and different French-speaking nations. (She additionally gained the 1988 Eurovision Tune Contest with a French-language music … representing Switzerland.) And early in her English-language profession, even earlier than “My Coronary heart Will Go On” from “Titanic,” she was chosen to carry out “The Energy of The Dream,” the theme music for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.
Dion’s selection of music additionally evoked a sporting connection: Piaf wrote it about her lover, the boxer Marcel Cerdan. Cerdan died shortly after she composed the music, in a airplane crash.
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