NANTERRE – Celine Dion reached the high F, sustained it, exhaled and then glanced back at the band with a brief, almost incredulous look toward her musical director. The reaction was clear to the roughly 30,000 fans before their roar had even faded: Dion had done it.
She closed the encore with “All By Myself,” the 1996 signature song that has long served as a test of the Quebec superstar’s vocal power. It marked her first full concert in more than six years — and her first since being diagnosed with stiff person syndrome, a rare, progressive neurological disorder that affects muscles, including those in the throat.
Few people questioned whether Dion could still sing. The greater uncertainty was whether she could complete an entire concert — and return to the stage two nights later to do it again.
Dion answered the crowd in three words: “Je vais bien.” (“I’m doing fine.”)
“When she hit that note, I grabbed my friend’s arm. I’d been holding my breath without realizing it. Then I started crying. ‘She’s back. She’s really back,’” said Élodie Marchand, 42, a primary school teacher from Nantes.
A disease that goes for the throat
Dion, 58, had not performed a full concert since March 8, 2020. Diagnosed with stiff person syndrome in 2022, she faced a disease that had constricted the throat she had relied on as a singer since the age of 5. She canceled a world tour, then the remaining dates, and withdrew from public view. On Saturday night at the Plenitude Arena in Nanterre, west of Paris, she performed 25 songs over 2 hours and 15 minutes — the opening night of an engagement designed to demonstrate that she can return to work.
The sold-out schedule is demanding: 16 performances over five weeks, followed by 10 additional shows booked for May 2027. In total, Dion is set to take the stage 26 times before audiences numbering in the tens of thousands.
France’s last chance to hear her perform came in July 2024, when she sang one song from the Eiffel Tower during the Olympic opening ceremony. The four-minute appearance, delivered on a single night, was hailed around the world as a resurrection. This time, she needed to make it through 25 songs — and then rise to perform again on Wednesday.
Stiff person syndrome affects only one or two people in every million. The condition causes muscles to stiffen and can trigger spasms powerful enough to break bones, with loud noise, physical contact and emotional stress among the potential triggers. An arena filled with 30,000 people presents all three. Dion told NBC in 2024 that singing while living with the disorder felt like being strangled.
“Touring can be very difficult even when you’re 100%,” she said in a 2023 statement announcing the cancellation of her remaining dates.
‘I promised myself I wouldn’t cry’
She cried before she finished the first song. In a Dior gown and a Boucheron necklace, she pressed her hands together in prayer, then missed her cue in “On ne change pas,” on the line about the skinny little girl from Charlemagne, Quebec.
“I promised myself I wouldn’t cry,” she said. The crowd answered by chanting the riff from “Seven Nation Army.”
She said she had learned to live with the fragility and made it her reason to keep going. Then she sang for another two hours.
The voice has lost some of its top; it is not the instrument that sold 250 million albums. Every big note is now a decision she makes in front of 30,000 people.
She took most of them. She sang “My Heart Will Go On” and “The Power of Love,” then Catalani’s “Ebben? Ne andrò lontana” — Maria Callas’ signature aria — in pink feathers while fake snow fell. Her disease attacks the larynx. She went for it anyway.
Willo Perron’s set put her among gray megaliths, a pop Stonehenge. An 18-voice gospel choir came on in robes.
Michelle Obama watched from the seats. Outside, fans wore sashes reading “Celine Dion 2026,” like beauty pageant winners, and T-shirts from the LVMH house that shares her first name.
“My daughter kept saying, ‘Mum, we can’t go all the way to Paris for Celine,’” said Isabelle Gagnon, 52, a teacher from Montreal. “Tonight my daughter was singing beside me, and I thought: you see? This is why we came.”
“In Montreal, you grow up knowing those songs whether you mean to or not,” said Antoine Beaulieu, 31, a graphic designer. “I used to pretend I was too cool for Celine. Tonight I knew every word, so clearly that was a lie.”
Camille Morel, 38, a pharmacist from Lyon, put her phone away. “I wanted to actually be there,” she said. “My voice is completely gone. I’m supposed to be working tomorrow — good luck to them.”
Then the encore, and the note: the last “anymore” a cappella, the note bent upward, the orchestra surging in beneath her. She fanned herself, laughing at her own relief.
She closed with two Jean-Jacques Goldman standards and a last line to the room: I love you, my loves. Take care of yourselves.
It had taken her 2,379 days to get back. She has 25 more nights to go.
