PARIS (AP) — Celine Dion made a triumphant return Friday with a really public efficiency: closing out the Paris Olympics’ opening ceremony from the Eiffel Tower.
Practically two years after revealing her stiff particular person syndrome prognosis, Dion belted Edith Piaf’s “Hymne à l’amour” (“Hymn to Love”) because the finale of the roughly four-hour spectacle. Her look had been teased for weeks, however organizers and Dion’s representatives had refused to verify whether or not she was performing.
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, beautifully scintillating finale.”
This photograph launched by the Olympic Broadcasting Providers exhibits Canadian Singer Celine Dion performing on the Eiffel Tower through the opening ceremony for the 2024 Summer season Olympics in Paris, France, Friday, July 26, 2024. (Olympic Broadcasting Providers by way of AP)
Dion had been absent from the stage since 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic pressured the postponement of her tour to 2022. That tour was ultimately suspended within the wake of her prognosis.
The uncommon neurological dysfunction causes inflexible muscle tissue and painful muscle spasms, which had been affecting Dion’s skill to stroll and sing. In June, on the premiere of the documentary “I Am: Celine Dion,” she instructed The Related Press that returning required remedy, “bodily, mentally, emotionally, vocally.”
“In order that’s why it takes some time. However completely why we’re doing this as a result of I’m already just a little bit again,” she stated 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 offered the ultimate award of the evening to a standing ovation.
For Friday’s efficiency, Dion’s pearl outfit was certainly designed by Dior. Talking on French tv, the Paris organizing committee’s director of design and costume for ceremonies, Daphné Bürki, recalled Dion’s enthusiasm for the chance.
“After we referred to as Celine Dion one 12 months in the past she stated sure immediately,” Bürki stated.
Dion shouldn’t be truly French — the French Canadian is from Quebec — however she has a robust connection to the nation and the Olympics. Dion’s first language is French, and she or he has dominated the charts in France and different French-speaking international locations. (She additionally gained the 1988 Eurovision Track Contest with a French-language track … representing Switzerland.) And early in her English-language profession — even earlier than “My Coronary heart Will Go On” from “Titanic” — she was tapped to carry out “The Energy of The Dream,” the theme track for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.
Dion’s track selection additionally evoked a sports activities connection: Piaf wrote it about her lover, boxer Marcel Cerdan. Cerdan died quickly after she wrote the track, in a airplane crash.
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Related Press reporters Sylvie Corbet, Jerome Pugmire and Samuel Petrequin contributed.
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For extra protection of the Paris Olympics, go to https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games.
