Celine Dion sings again, and Paris joins in
Celine Dion performed her first full concert since 2020 at the Plénitude Arena in Paris following her diagnosis with stiff-person syndrome. Despite emotional difficulties during the performance, the audience supported her, turning the event into a communal experience.
Why it matters
The performance marks a significant cultural moment regarding the intersection of celebrity, health struggles, and the emotional connection between artists and their fans.
It is strange that a song should come to mean something different from what its creator intended. When Jim Steinman wrote ‘It’s all coming back to me now’ in the late 1980s, he was thinking of the scene in which Heathcliff opens Cathy’s grave in Wuthering Heights . “I was trying to write a song about dead things coming to life,” he said, emphasising the fear rather than the comfort in such a return. Yet the song came to be understood as a love ballad, and since Celine Dion first recorded it in 1996, she has spent a great deal of her career being misunderstood in the same way.
Also covering this story
13 other newsrooms covered this event. We read each version separately.
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