Celine Dion sings again, and Paris joins in

It is strange that a song should come to mean something different from what its creator intended. When Jim Steinman wrote ‘It’s all coming back to me now’ in the late 1980s, he was thinking of the scene in which Heathcliff opens Cathy’s grave in Wuthering Heights. “I was trying to write a song about dead things coming to life,” he said, emphasising the fear rather than the comfort in such a return. Yet the song came to be understood as a love ballad, and since Celine Dion first recorded it in 1996, she has spent a great deal of her career being misunderstood in the same way.

What exactly is an audience asking for when it demands a singer’s comeback? Nine million people signed up for the ballot, even though the venue had fewer than half a million seats, suggesting that many had already answered that question before fully considering what such a return might mean.

Celine started her 26-night residency at the Plénitude Arena in Nanterre, situated on the right bank of the Seine River, 47 minutes later than scheduled. It was her first full concert since March 2020 and her first performance of any duration since she announced in December 2022 that she had stiff-person syndrome. She opened with ‘On ne change pas’ (We don’t change), accompanied only by a pianist and four violinists, and the audience was on its feet before she had finished the first line.

However, she did not carry on for long. She broke down during the first number, lost her place in a lyric she had been singing for three decades, and held the microphone out to the audience. Thirty thousand people picked up the bridge and carried it to the end. It was not a recovery, and it never had to be. “I had promised myself not to cry,” she told them later, before adding that the tears were the good kind.

People take part in a karaoke session featuring Celine Dion’s songs, on the eve of her first concert in Paris
| Photo Credit:
AP

A power ballad needs to be built-up. The verse begins gently, then the music gains momentum and finally, the chorus arrives in full force. It works only when a singer can sustain that effort. Stiff-person syndrome, which causes muscles to stiffen and resist movement, makes it especially demanding. After six years away from the stage, Celine was returning not just to perform but to test the limits of what her body could still do.

The production surrounding her was simpler than anyone had expected. There was no video screen, no procession of costumed performers, no elaborate stage architecture unfolding over the course of the evening. Behind her, a series of plain slabs created by stage designer Willo Perron opened and closed against a dark backdrop. A few visual flourishes had been carefully positioned: a pink feathered cape appeared when she sang the Catalani aria beneath falling snow, and later she bent down at the edge of the stage to reach those who had moved forward.

Though many do not realise, Celine occupies a larger place in Indian listening habits. Her songs have long been part of our everyday life, playing in homes after dinner, on late-night cab rides and at school annual day functions. For many young singers, ‘Because you loved me’ or ‘My heart will go on’ were among the first songs they performed in public. Over the years, her music has become woven into personal memories.

Celine has never presented this return as a recovery. The condition remains, and ten of the 26 performances have already been moved to next May. “The path was rocky and the road longer than expected, but I managed to stay on it,” she told the audience. It was a statement about perseverance, not about being cured. In 1989 Steinman got the essence of it right, because a voice which has spent 30 years supporting everything is now being supported, and the 30,000 people who did it on Saturday will have to do it again on Wednesday and again on Friday and again for as long as she keeps asking.