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During the opening of I Am: Céline Dion, the gut-wrenching, Irene Taylor-directed documentary about the singer’s rare medical condition, Stiff Person Syndrome, an interview with “vintage” Dion is shown. She’s still in her early career and therefore still more versed in (Canadian) French when she says with a heavy accent, “My dream is to be international star and to be able to sing all my life.” It’s an immediately bittersweet introduction, for viewers already know that Dion has been felled by her condition for the past four years, not performing live since 2020, when she managed to round out her Courage World Tour in New Jersey (a tour plagued—pun intended—by Covid-19 shutdowns and, then, her illness). So maybe, if nothing else, Dion decided she needed to perform again so that the last place she sang wouldn’t be in New Jersey, but a milieu more befitting of her glamor and caliber.
Thus, as she put it, if she was going to perform again, it ought to be at the Olympics in Paris. The symbolism is clear, of course. This is the woman who has been a “vocal athlete” (as Kelly Clarkson called her) for her entire life. And training to perform again for this particular appearance was nothing if not a marathon. One that has been dogged by so many physical setbacks that have, in turn, caused emotional lows that then feed those physical setbacks anew in a proverbial vicious cycle.
For someone like Dion to be unable to use her voice—as though the Sea Witch (a.k.a. Ursula) ripped it out of her like a soul—is unimaginable. For it is the entire essence of her being, her literal raison d’être. As she also remarked in I Am: Céline Dion, “Music. I miss it a lot. But also…the people. I miss them, you know?” In another “vintage” interview clip in the documentary, Dion is shown saying that performing is like a drug, complete with the rush of the audience and the energy that they give her. The life that they literally breathe into her with their presence and energy. She also adds, “When you have the soul of an artist…artist one day, artist always. You can’t live without it.” I Am: Céline Dion gives a snapshot of how challenging and, yes, depressing it is for her to do just that—taking a break from her usual career rigors to focus on improving her health. Plus, spending more time with her twins, Eddy and Nelson. While she seems to enjoy the latter, it doesn’t do much to mitigate the physical and emotional pain caused by her condition. A disorder so rare it only happens to one in a million people. And while Dion is a one in a million talent, she certainly never wanted that to extend into a health condition.
In the documentary, she gives a sample of what her voice sounds like with the drawbacks of SPS, breaking down crying after hearing it go all out of control. Not being able to make her vocals do what she wants them to. “I don’t want people to hear that,” she wails. Which is another large part of why she stopped singing. Anything less than perfection, to Dion, is not worth delivering to the public. As Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) said to her at the end of the “Ashes” music video, “You’re at an eleven. We need to get you down to a five, five and a half, tops. Just phone it in.” Dion ripostes, “Listen, this thing only goes to eleven. So beat it, Spider-Man.”
And she was definitely “at eleven” for her rendition of Édith Piaf’s “Hymne à l’amour,” dramatically delivered from the Eiffel Tower, just beneath the five signature Olympic rings that have been placed on the structure in honor of the games. Wearing a sparkling white evening gown (Dior, naturally) suited for a Vegas residency, Dion proved what she said (and then some) in I Am: Céline Dion: “I’m working hard with my sports medicine therapist every day to build back my strength and my ability to perform again.” Her drive to perform is part of what has helped her combat, as much as possible, being totally debilitated by her condition, declaring, “All I know is singing, it’s what I’ve done all my life. And it’s what I love to do the most.”
Audiences could see that love on full display the night of July 26th, a rain-soaked evening that was dogged by other behind-the-scenes issues (including a bomb threat near Parc des Princes ahead of a soccer match between Israel and Mali and a strategic, widespread arson attack on high-speed French rail lines). But as Dion delivered Piaf’s powerful words in French (e.g., “Mon amour, puisque tu m’aimes/J’irais jusqu’au bout du monde,” or, in English, “My love, since you love me/I would go to the ends of the Earth”), it was difficult to focus on anything else but the reminder of how much the world has been missing this voice from its frequency.
One can see how much she’s missed it, too. It’s there, in Dion’s eyes, as the song comes to a close, how she’s utterly overwhelmed by being able to perform again, looking out into the black night of Paris and knowing that thousands (plus the millions watching on TV) are taking in her show(wo)manship yet again. As Céline says in I Am: Céline Dion, “It’s the performance that counts, not the song. A performance is way bigger than the song.” And this was a very big performance indeed. Monumental. For so many reasons—not least of which is the fact that Dion stayed true to herself and her fans when she promised, “If I can’t run, I’ll walk. If I can’t walk, I’ll crawl. And I won’t stop. I won’t stop.” And, in returning, she chose a song that has a unifying lyric at a time when the world has never seemed less united: “Dieu réunit ceux qui s’aiment” a.k.a. “God unites those who love each other” (this belted out in a peak “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina” manner and composition, complete with Dion’s chignon). While Piaf might have been referring to the love of her life who died in a plane crash, Dion, here, is referring to the audience she’s been separated from for far too long.
And she’s trained and conditioned herself for these past years, like an Olympic athlete, in order to be with them again. As she pronounced on 1999’s “That’s The Way It Is,” “When you want it the most/There’s no easy way out/When you’re ready to go/And your heart’s left in doubt/Don’t give up on your faith/Love comes to those who believe it/And that’s the way it is.” Indeed, that’s exactly the way it was for her grand return, one that didn’t disappoint. Even if some thought that the weather did.
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Genna Rivieccio
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