Céline Dion review – singer’s first live show in years marks a triumphant, emotional return

Plenitude Arena, Paris Dion wiped away tears and belted out the notes, giving an astounding performance despite her diagnosis with stiff person syndrome

I n 2022, when Céline Dion shared that she had been diagnosed with a rare incurable neurological disorder called stiff person syndrome (SPS), there was no guarantee that the 58-year-old would ever tour again. Her condition, which resulted in muscle spasms so strong that it left her with broken ribs , had made it impossible to perform, and in a 2024 documentary, I Am: Celine Dion , fans saw how the disease had constricted her once seemingly infallible voice. Through it all, though, Dion was resolute that she would one day return to the stage. “If I can’t run, I’ll walk. If I can’t walk, I’ll crawl,” she said in the film. “But I won’t stop.”

Thankfully at the opening night of her sold out five-week residency in Paris, her first full-length concerts in six years, no crawling is needed: Celine Dion is back. She glides onto the stage in a black dress, an enormous diamond necklace clasped around her throat, and launches into On ne change pas. There are tears almost immediately: she struggles through the second verse, her voice cracking as she begins to cry. By the time the strum of Destin has kicked in, though, that emotion is replaced with sheer elation. “I made a promise to be back on stage. Singing for you. Singing for me,” she says. “Singing for life.”

That she does. There is no cure for SPS, but the work Dion has put into managing her condition so she can perform again is astounding. Still, clearly some necessary allowances have been made. Some songs such as Because You Loved Me, The Power of Love and My Heart Will Go On have all been transposed down. It’s understandable given the effect her condition has had on her voice, although, in the case of Because You Loved Me and It’s All Coming Back To Me Now, it does somewhat dampen their melodramatic potency.

That is not to say that Dion’s voice is weakened: when she needs to, as she does on the driving Tout l’or des hommes, she can still belt out a note. There’s also some welcome texture to her vocal, too: recently released ballad Dansons sees her embracing her lower register, while Courage, recorded following the death of her late husband René Angélil, is genuinely affecting as Dion allows her voice to get fragile and raspy.

For some, Dion’s success — she has sold more than 200m records and is the third most successful female artist of all time — is inexplicable: to them, her music is the apotheosis of saccharine and anodyne adult contemporary. But for the 30,000-plus in the crowd tonight, that contempt is decidedly absent. Afterall, you don’t attend a Céline Dion show expecting anything avant-garde. You’re there to hear Beauty and the Beast, an unexpected highlight.

Still, Dion does have some surprises up her sleeve: the run of J’irai où tu iras, Ne bouge pas and Dans un autre monde provides some rollicking respite from the balladry, Dion strutting up and down the stage while doing vocal acrobatics or fake boxing with backing singer.