PARIS (AP) — Celine Dion made a triumphant return Friday with a very public performance: closing out the Paris Olympics’ opening ceremony from the Eiffel Tower.
Nearly two years after revealing her stiff person syndrome diagnosis, Dion belted Edith Piaf’s “Hymne à l’amour” (“Hymn to Love”) as the finale of the roughly four-hour spectacle. Her appearance had been teased for weeks, but organizers and Dion’s representatives had refused to confirm whether she was performing.
On a page dedicated to Dior’s contributions to the opening ceremony, the media guide referred to “a world star, for a purely grandiose, superbly scintillating finale.”
For Friday’s performance, Dion’s pearl outfit was indeed designed by Dior. Speaking on French television, the Paris organizing committee’s director of design and costume for ceremonies, Daphné Bürki, recalled Dion’s enthusiasm for the opportunity.
“When we called Celine Dion one year ago she said yes straight away,” Bürki said.
Dion is not actually French — the French Canadian is from Quebec — but she has a strong connection to the country and the Olympics. Dion’s first language is French, and she has dominated the charts in France and other French-speaking countries. (She also won the 1988 Eurovision Song Contest with a French-language song ... representing Switzerland.) And early in her English-language career — even before “My Heart Will Go On” from “Titanic” — she was tapped to perform “The Power of The Dream,” the theme song for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.
Dion’s song choice also evoked a sports connection: Piaf wrote it about her lover, boxer Marcel Cerdan. Cerdan died soon after she wrote the song, in a plane crash.