Canadian singer Celine Dion performs at the top of the Eiffel Tower during the opening ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, France on July 26, 2024. | Photo credit: AP
Celine Dion made a triumphant return on Friday with a very public performance: She closed the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics from the Eiffel Tower.
Nearly two years after revealing her Stiff Person Syndrome diagnosis, Ms. Dion sang Edith Piaf’s “Hymne à l’amour” (“Hymn of Love”) as the finale of the nearly four-hour spectacle. Her appearance had been teased for weeks, but organizers and Ms. Dion’s representatives had declined to confirm whether she was performing.
On a page devoted to Ms. Dion’s contribution to the opening ceremony, the media guide referred to “a world star, for a purely opulent, brilliantly sparkling closing ceremony.”
Ms. Dion had been absent from the stage since 2020, when her tour had to be postponed until 2022 because of the coronavirus pandemic. That tour was eventually suspended in the wake of her diagnosis.
The rare neurological disorder causes muscle stiffness and painful muscle spasms, which were affecting Ms. Dion’s ability to walk and sing. In June, at the premiere of the documentary “I Am: Celine Dion,” she told The Daily Telegraph. associated Press that “physical, mental, emotional, verbal” therapy is needed to bounce back.
“So it takes a little bit of time. But that’s why we’re doing it because I’m already a little bit behind,” she said then.
Even before the documentary was released, Ms. Dion had taken steps toward a comeback. In February, she made another surprise appearance at the Grammy Awards, where she presented the final award of the night to a standing ovation.
Celine Dion performs during the opening ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympics on July 26, 2024 in Paris, France. | Photo credit: AP
For Friday’s performance, Ms. Dion’s pearl dress was actually designed by Dior. Speaking on French television, Daphne Burki, the Paris organizing committee’s director of design and costumes for the ceremonies, recalled Ms. Dion’s enthusiasm for the occasion. “When we called Celine Dion a year ago, she said yes immediately,” she said.
Ms. Dion is not actually French — the French Canadian hails from Quebec — but she has a deep connection to the country and the Olympics. Her mother tongue is French, and she has dominated the charts in France and other French-speaking countries. (She also won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1988 with a French-language song representing Switzerland.) And early in her English-language career — even before “My Heart Will Go On” from “Titanic” — she was chosen to perform “The Power of the Dream,” the theme song for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.
Ms. Dion’s choice of song also evoked a connection to sports: Piaf wrote it about her lover, boxer Marcel Cerdan. Cerdan died in a plane crash shortly after she wrote the song.
