Celine Dion makes musical comeback at Paris Olympics with Eiffel Tower serenade

Canadian Singer Celine Dion performs on top of the Eiffel Tower during the opening ceremony for the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, France, on July 26, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

Nearly two years after revealing her stiff person syndrome diagnosis, Ms. Dion belted Edith Piaf’s “Hymne à l’amour” (“Hymn to Love”) as the finale of the roughly four-hour spectacle. Her appearance had been teased for weeks, but organizers and Ms. Dion’s representatives had refused to confirm whether she was performing.

On a page dedicated to Ms. Dion’s contributions to the opening ceremony, the media guide referred to “a world star, for a purely grandiose, superbly scintillating finale.”

Ms. Dion had been absent from the stage since 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic forced the postponement of her tour to 2022. That tour was eventually suspended in the wake of her diagnosis.

The rare neurological disorder causes rigid muscles 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 Associated Press that returning required therapy, “physically, mentally, emotionally, vocally.”

“So that’s why it takes a while. But absolutely why we’re doing this because I’m already a little bit back,” she said then.

Even before the documentary’s release, 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 in Paris, France, during the opening ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympics on July 26, 2024.
| Photo Credit:
AP

For Friday’s performance, Ms. Dion’s pearl outfit was indeed designed by Dior. Speaking on French television, the Paris organizing committee’s director of design and costume for ceremonies, Daphné Bürki, recalled Ms. Dion’s enthusiasm for the opportunity. “When we called Celine Dion one year ago she said yes straight away,” she said.

Ms. Dion is not actually French — the French Canadian is from Quebec — but she has a strong connection to the country and the Olympics. Her first language is French, and she has dominated the charts in France and other French-speaking countries. (She also won the 1988 Eurovision Song Contest 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 tapped to perform “The Power of The Dream,” the theme song for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.

Ms. Dion’s song choice also evoked a sports connection: Piaf wrote it about her lover, boxer Marcel Cerdan. Cerdan died soon after she wrote the song, in a plane crash.