Celine Dion makes triumphant return in Paris after six years sidelined by rare diagnosis

If there were any doubts about whether the “Queen of Ballads” could still hit the high notes, they were put to rest on Saturday night when she belted out “All by Myself,” one of her most difficult songs, in front of 30,000 adoring fans in Paris.

It was a poignant comeback for the Quebec-born singer, 58, who was forced to stop touring six years ago after being diagnosed with a rare neurological disorder, stiff-person syndrome.

Having spent the years since largely out of the spotlight, Dion was overcome with emotion, breaking down in tears during the first few minutes of her show at Plenitude Arena, one of Europe’s largest indoor concert venues.

Aptly, she began with the French-language song “On ne change pas” — which translates to “one doesn’t change” — an apparent signal that she is the same Celine as ever.

The road to recovery has been “rocky and longer than it should have been,” she told the crowd, after she endured years of physical therapy and medical treatments. There were nerves mixed with raw emotion as she asked the crowd: “Can you hear my heartbeat?”

Dion, an icon across the French-speaking world, spoke of fulfilling her “promise” to come back. Two years ago, she sang here from the Eiffel Tower during the 2024 Olympics opening ceremony , marking a milestone in her recovery in front of a TV audience of hundreds of millions.

Despite living with an illness that at times prevents her from singing or even walking due to severe muscle spasms, Dion on Saturday mixed classic onstage theatrics with titanic ballads for more than two hours.

The concert, the first in a two-part, 26-show residency in the city, was hotly anticipated, with 9 million people entering a presale ticket lottery back in April. Some American fans told NBC News they paid $1,200 per ticket on the resale market.

After the show, fans emerged in disbelief. “It was a victory lap,” said Francesca Pezzulo, 31, from Los Angeles. “I think her belief is renewed, I think her spirit is renewed.”

It was a bucket-list moment for Ashley Hammond, 42, who flew in from Miami for the concert. “It gave you chills. It was everything we dreamed of,” she said.

“I think Celine is the queen,” Pirkir Gutlausson, a 53-year-old mechanic from Iceland, told NBC News.

Dion is performing a total of 16 concerts until October, with a further 10 in the spring of 2027.

The residency is expected to cause a mini tourism boom, with an influx of hundreds of thousands of fans spending millions of dollars on par with Taylor Swift’s shows in Paris, according to the hospitality and tourism consultancy MKG.

For eager fans, there were plenty of opportunities to spend money. A Celine pop-up store at fashion boutique Galeries Lafayette had some T-shirts on sale for $145.