Celine Dion’s road to her Las Vegas comeback starts with a dazzling performance at the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics in Paris on Friday. This highly anticipated event marks the Canadian pop legend’s first performance since her last concert on March 9, 2020, at the Prudential Center in Newark, NJ.
Dion, 56, was seen beaming on Monday as she greeted fans and signed autographs outside the Royal Monceau Hotel near the Champs-Élysées. Lady Gaga, another rumored headliner for the opening ceremony, is also staying at the same hotel. According to TMZ, Dion will earn $2 million for singing a single song during the event.
This news is particularly surprising given Dion’s recent health struggles. In the Amazon Prime documentary “I Am: Celine Dion,” viewers witnessed her suffering an intense, full-body seizure for 10 minutes due to overexertion while recording a song for the documentary’s soundtrack. In December 2022, Dion announced in a tearful Instagram video that she had been diagnosed with Stiff Person’s Syndrome, a rare condition affecting fewer than one in a million people. The syndrome is characterized by rigid muscles that spasm painfully and uncontrollably, often triggered by noise or emotional distress.
“Unfortunately, the spasms affect every aspect of my daily life, sometimes causing difficulties when I walk and not allowing me to use my vocal cords to sing the way I’m used to,” Dion disclosed in the video.
Despite this, Dion has made public appearances that suggest she is fighting back against the incurable disease. Notably, at the Grammy Awards in February, she presented Taylor Swift with the Album of the Year award and even shared a backstage moment with Grammy-nominated singer Sonyaé Elise, singing harmoniously in an Instagram video shared by Elise.
In May, Dion nearly revealed her Olympic performance during an NBC-TV special interview with Hoda Kotb. After the cameras stopped, Kotb asked Dion when she would perform next. Dion looked to her manager, John Nelson, and asked, “Can I tell her?” but Nelson insisted she couldn’t divulge the information at that time.
In an April interview with Vogue France, Dion expressed a specific goal of returning to Paris. “I’ve chosen to work with all my body and soul, from head to toe, with a medical team,” she said. “I want to be the best I can be. My goal is to see the Eiffel Tower again.”
On Friday, Dion will fulfill two goals at once, as the opening ceremony will take place on the banks of the Seine River with the iconic Eiffel Tower in the background.
Representatives for concert promoter AEG Live have repeatedly expressed hope that Dion will eventually appear at Resorts World in Las Vegas, where she had to cancel a residency that was supposed to begin in November 2021. However, as reported by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, there is no formal plan for a Las Vegas return as of yet.
This won’t be Dion’s first Olympic performance; she previously performed “The Power of the Dream” at the opening ceremony of the 1996 games in Atlanta.
