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.
Almost 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, fantastically 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 time Olympics in Paris, France, Friday, July 26, 2024. (Olympic Broadcasting Providers through AP)
Dion had been absent from the stage since 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic compelled the postponement of her tour to 2022. That tour was finally suspended within the wake of her prognosis.
The uncommon neurological dysfunction causes inflexible muscular tissues and painful muscle spasms, which have been affecting Dion’s potential to stroll and sing. In June, on the premiere of the documentary “I Am: Celine Dion,” she informed 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 slightly bit again,” she mentioned 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 night time 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.
“Once we known as Celine Dion one yr in the past she mentioned sure immediately,” Bürki mentioned.
Dion will not be truly French — the French Canadian is from Quebec — however she has a powerful 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 received the 1988 Eurovision Tune Contest with a French-language music … 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 music for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.
Dion’s music selection additionally evoked a sports activities connection: Piaf wrote it about her lover, boxer Marcel Cerdan. Cerdan died quickly after she wrote the music, 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.