A megastar is reborn as Céline Dion returns to the stage

1 day ago 9

Music superstar makes her much-anticipated return with a series of 26 concerts at a 30,000-seat arena outside of Paris

Published Sep 11, 2026 • Last updated 3 minutes ago • 5 minute read

Celine Dion performs on the opening night of her "Courage" world tour at the Videotron Centre in Quebec City, on Sept. 18, 2019.

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By Brendan Kelly

It was March 1990, and I was in the offices of CBS Records in a nondescript building in the St-Laurent industrial park meeting Céline Dion for the first time. Dion, who was a couple of weeks away from turning 22, was kind of shy and her English was, well, a wee bit shaky.

Seeing her command of the language of Streisand wasn’t great. I suggested to her manager, René Angélil, who would marry Dion four years later at a lavish wedding in Montreal, that we do the interview in French. But Angélil would have none of it.

He told me we had to do it in English so she could start getting used to talking to journalists in that language.

Chatting with her that day, I realized that if I veered off course and asked her, say, what she thought of that year’s Canadiens team or Quebec politics, she’d be at a loss for words in English. She was almost reading a speech. The other thing I remember is that Angélil told me that this rather unassuming young woman was going to become the biggest pop star in the world.

I knew she was already a big deal in Quebec and France, had been a vedette here since she was 13 and, at that point, had already sold over 900,000 albums. But when Angélil said the thing about her being set to dominate the world, I was thinking, ‘Yeah, sure, buddy. I hear that one pretty well every second week. …”

Well, it turns out Angélil knew what he was talking about. By 1995, she’d sold 40 million albums around the world — hey, that was the last era when folks actually bought albums! And that was even before the Titanic song My Heart Will Go On and the Oscars and all that.

Here we are three decades later, and La Dion is set to make her much-anticipated return to the stage with a series of 26 concerts at a 30,000-capacity arena in Nanterre, a Paris suburb. They will all sell out by showtime and, yes, that is nearly 800,000 tickets sold — 500,000 tickets went on sale for the first 16 concerts this fall, and they sold out in less than an hour

The first show is Saturday night at the Plenitude Arena, and the buzz is off the charts.

Four years ago, she announced that she was suffering from Stiff Person Syndrome, a rare autoimmune neurological disorder, and many of us saw the absolutely devastating impact of the illness in the 2024 Amazon documentary I Am: Celine Dion, which includes a horrifying hard-to-watch scene where her body convulses with spasms. It looked like she’d never perform again. Her last full solo concert took place on March 8, 2020, in Newark, N.J., during her Courage World Tour.

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But there she was at the opening ceremonies of the Paris Olympics in summer 2024 singing Édith Piaf’s classic Hymne à l’amour at the Eiffel Tower. It was a breathtaking performance and it was like the entire world stopped to watch it in wonder.

She may not have had a chart-topping hit in well over 20 years, but she remains one of the world’s most iconic pop stars. Mario Lefebvre was at CBS Records here in Quebec when Dion’s English-language debut Unison launched in 1990, and later worked closely with Angélil managing her career. Lefebvre said she occupies a unique space in the pop stratosphere, in the same company as giants like Michael Jackson and Madonna. He noted that three of her albums sold more than 30 million units, that she is hands down the biggest French-language singer of all time and one of the best-selling English-language artists ever.

Lefebvre said the Paris concerts are just the latest indication of her status at the top of the music game.

“This is the biggest thing that’s happened in the showbiz world in a long, long time bar none,” Lefebvre said during a chat Friday morning. “The story is like a Hollywood fairy tale in a way. The famous star who has to stop her world tour because of COVID. She goes back home and becomes very ill. She’s lost her mom, she’s lost her dad, her husband. She has this terrible disease. No one knows how to cure it. So for her to be set to get back on stage Saturday night, for most people this is a complete surprise. I, for one, always thought she’d be back on stage because of her incredible will. That’s something I’ve always admired about her. She has such determination.”

It’s true. I’ve never met a pop star with such drive. She would literally do anything to reach the top. But there’s more to notre Céline nationale than just ambition. I’ve also never met a major singer who is as genuine as Dion. Artists always have their talking points ready. They’re doing it for a cause. This is the album they’re most proud of. Blah, blah, blah.

Dion, in contrast, just says what pops into her head. And she’s absolutely hilarious. Very wacky.

Did you see the videos on social media this week showing her talking with fans outside of her Paris hotel at 2 a.m.? At one point, they all start singing her massive French hit Pour que tu m’aimes encore together, and she’s just in heaven, playing air guitar.

That’s Céline. She really does love her fans more than anything else in the world, other than her family, and I, like Lefebvre, always believed she’d be back after her health issues because I knew Dion simply can’t accept the concept of a world where she is not giving it her all on stage.

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