Celine Dion returns to Paris stage after six years with stiff person syndrome
Celine Dion performed her first full concert in more than six years on Saturday night at the Plenitude Arena in Nanterre, west of Paris. The two-hour, 15-minute show marked the start of a sold-out engagement meant to prove she can work again after stiff person syndrome forced her off the stage.
Dion, 58, had not played a full concert since March 8, 2020. She was diagnosed in 2022 with stiff person syndrome, a rare, progressive neurological disease that stiffens muscles and sets off spasms violent enough to break bones, triggered by loud noise, by touch, by emotional stress. She canceled a world tour and went quiet.
The run is punishing: 16 shows in five weeks, 10 more booked for May 2027, 26 nights in all before tens of thousands of people each time. Some 30,000 people attended Saturday’s concert.
She hit the high F, held it, then blew out a breath and turned to look back at the band, a quick, disbelieving glance toward her musical director. The note came during “All By Myself,” the song her voice has been measured against since 1996, saved for the encore.
Dion gave the crowd three words: “Je vais bien.” (“I’m doing fine.”)
“When she hit that note, I grabbed my friend’s arm. I’d been holding my breath without realizing. Then I started crying. ‘She’s back. She’s really back,'” said Élodie Marchand, 42, a primary schoolteacher from Nantes.
She cried before she finished the first song. In a Dior gown and a Boucheron necklace, she pressed her hands together in prayer, then missed her cue in “On ne change pas.”
“I promised myself I wouldn’t cry,” she said. The crowd answered by chanting the riff from “Seven Nation Army.”
The voice has lost some of its top. Every big note is now a decision she makes in front of 30,000 people. She took most of them, singing “My Heart Will Go On” and “The Power of Love,” then Catalani’s “Ebben? Ne andrò lontana” in pink feathers while fake snow fell.
Willo Perron’s set put her among gray megaliths, a pop Stonehenge. An 18-voice gospel choir came on in robes. Michelle Obama watched from the seats.
“My daughter kept saying, ‘Mum, we can’t go all the way to Paris for Celine,'” said Isabelle Gagnon, 52, a teacher from Montreal. “Tonight my daughter was singing beside me, and I thought: you see? This is why we came.”
“In Montreal, you grow up knowing those songs whether you mean to or not,” said Antoine Beaulieu, 31, a graphic designer. “I used to pretend I was too cool for Celine. Tonight I knew every word, so clearly that was a lie.”
Camille Morel, 38, a pharmacist from Lyon, put her phone away. “I wanted to actually be there,” she said. “My voice is completely gone. I’m supposed to be working tomorrow , good luck to them.”
It had taken her 2,379 days to get back. She has 25 more nights to go.
