Celine Dion Live Rendition of Edith Piaf Classic at Paris Games 2024 Opening
Celine Dion Returns To Stage At Paris Games 2024
Celine Dion Returns To Stage At Paris Games 2024
Celine Dion – who has canceled her live tour in March 2020 as a result of her health – recently brought down the Paris 2024 Olympic Games opening ceremony with a stunning rendition on an Edith Piaf classic.
Her performance of Hymne à l’Amour, a valedictory tribute to Piaf’s romantic passion, was a public triumph for both Paris and Céline Dion.
Piaf wrote the lyrics to this soaring ballad in 1949 in the home she had bought with her lover, the French boxing champion Marcel Cerdan.
However, the soundtrack was a tragic one.
Dion’s version received praise from around the world as one of the highlights of the opening ceremony of the Olympics.
After hours of rainy and chaotic pomp and circumstance waiting along the Seine, casual sports fans saw Céline Dion emerged. Amid showers of rain and fireworks, she sang a powerful version of Hymne à l’Amour.
Dressed in silver sparkles, accompanied by a rain-soaked piano on the steps of the Eiffel Tower, she not only sang but poured out with such gusto of a performer longing to resume touring.
She sang the French lyrics translated below:
The blue sky can tumble down upon us /
And the Earth can also collapse /
It doesn’t matter, if you love me/
If you love me / I don’t care about the entire world
The 56-year-old French-Canadian singer has not performed in over four years, owing to a rare, incurable neurological disorder called stiff person syndrome.
Despite struggling with uncontrollable muscle spasms extreme enough to break ribs, Dion, a true-blue born performer, vouched to one day return.
“If I can’t run, I’ll walk. If I can’t walk, I’ll crawl,” she said in her recent documentary I Am: Céline Dion.
Quoted by pop singer Kelly Clarkson as a ‘vocal athlete’, Dion’s determination to perform again was strong.
If you have seen the documentary, then you know it is nearly impossible to fathom the amount of medicine and therapy, on top of bottomless grit and determination, required for Dion to retake the stage.
While Dion has earned the distinction of a performance in the evening, it was Lady Gaga’s interpretation of Zizi Jeanmaire’s Mon truc en plumes (My Thing with Feathers) along the banks of the Seine that brought us all back to the 60s French dancy party.
Accentuated by voluminous feather pom-poms, the ballsy choreography pays direct homage to the French singer.
“I wanted nothing more than to create a performance that would warm the heart of France, celebrate French art and music, and on such a momentous occasion remind everyone of one of the most magical cities on earth – Paris,” said Gaga.
The nearly three-hour parade of athletes along the Seine was punctuated by French- Malian pop sensation Aya Nakamura. She strutted down the Pont des Arts, a bridge linking the Institut de France to the Louvre, for a gilded but a little unsteady performance of Pookie and Djadja.
Gojira, France’s greatest metal band, remixed the French revolutionary anthem Ah! Ça ira, along with opera singer Marina Viotti gliding by on a ship.
The Paris Symphony Orchestra incorporated choristers dressed as beheaded Marie Antoinettes and the famous aria from Georges Bizet’s Carmen: L’amour est un oiseau rebelled.
And lastly, Juliette Armanet renditioned a delicate version of John Lennon’s Imagine aboard a barge shaped like igneous rock through a rain-splashed camera.
