Celine Dion performs at Paris Olympics 2024 after a 3-year hiatus
Celine Dion made a powerful return to the stage at the Paris Olympics 2024 despite battling stiff person syndrome. After a three-year hiatus due to major health issues, she performed at the Olympics opening ceremony on Friday, leaving the audience speechless.
The disease she is suffering from is a rare neurological disease that causes muscle spasms and rigidity in the torso and limbs. Most devastating for Celine Dion, the disease has also made it difficult for the Canadian singer to control her larynx.
Celine Dion’s heartbreaking performance at the Paris Olympics 2024
On the night of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games opening ceremony, the skies were covered in rain clouds, the Seine River replaced the sea and the gleaming Eiffel Tower covered all potential stars, yet Edith Piaf’s tribute to her lost lover was as poignant as when it was first heard more than half a century ago.
Standing on the balcony of the Eiffel Tower adorned with the Olympic rings, world-renowned singer Celine Dion made an emotional comeback from illness as she sang in front of an audience of over 300,000, including an estimated 6,800 athletes.
Her powerful performance marked Dion’s first live recital after suffering from stiff-person syndrome in 2022. She sang Edith Piaf’s Hymne à l’amour. Her performance was the final act of the opening ceremony.
She wore a stunning high-neck gown for her performance, which was covered in crystals and featured a cape and long sleeves, which were sewn with tassels made of pearls, reports Page Six. The singer was seen holding back tears during her performance on stage as it was her first performance after leaving her Las Vegas residency to focus on her health in 2021. Also read – When do the Olympics 2024 start and end? See the 2024 Paris Games schedule
Kelly Clarkson got emotional after watching Dion’s performance
Show host Kelly Clarkson got emotional after watching the My Heart Will Go On singer’s performance. “I can’t really speak. It was beautiful,” she said. “For people who don’t know her story and what she’s gone through physically, it’s unbelievable. What she had to endure to get to that moment. She’s a vocal athlete. She’s incredible.”
Who is Edith Piaf?
Edith Piaf is a French icon who wrote the lyrics to “L’Hymne à l’Amour” in tribute to her love with French-Algerian professional boxer and world middleweight champion Marcel Cerdan. The singer and athlete met in New York in 1948 during Piaf’s tour of the United States. Love at first sight soon became a whirlwind. That love story had a devastating end on October 28, 1949, when Cerdan’s plane crashed in the middle of the Atlantic. The 33-year-old boxer was flying to North America to meet Piaf at her request.
Her lover’s fatal accident plunged Piaf into an abyss of grief and guilt, which she tried to suppress with morphine and alcohol. She never recovered from it and died in 1963, just days before the 14th anniversary of Cerdan’s death.
Three-quarters of a century later, five kilometres from the house where Piaf wrote the tragically prophetic lyrics of her love hymn, as Celine Dion sang the song it echoed from the balcony of the Eiffel Tower as a timeless tribute to the city of love and the passion of life.
And as the final notes of the song ended the Paris 2024 opening ceremony, the banks of the River Seine – witness to many real-life love stories – erupted in cheers.
Image Source NBC