The National Times - Celine Dion: the Quebec star's long and painful road to return

The Quebec-born singer of "My Heart Will Go On" will see her dream of returning to the stage finally materialise on Saturday when she steps out at the Plenitude Arena in Paris.

Over the course of 26 dates -- 16 in September and October, then another 10 next May -- the crooner will demonstrate how she has found her famous voice again, overcoming the effects of Stiff Person Syndrome.

The rare and incurable autoimmune disorder, which affects just one or two people per million, results in full-body seizures and agonising muscle spasms.

The 58-year-old, who revealed her diagnosis in December 2022, has described the condition as leaving her feeling as if she is being strangled, while the intense cramps are so strong they have left her with broken ribs.

Despite the difficulties, she has consistently offered hope to her legions of devoted fans who have waited six years since her last concert.

"I'm going to go back onstage, even if I have to crawl. Even if I have to talk with my hands," she promised in an interview with NBC in 2024.

In the end, there was no need for sign language: later that year, she stole the show at the rain-sodden opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics, making a surprise appearance up the Eiffel Tower to perform "Hymn to Love" by Edith Piaf.

But she still didn't trust her booming vocal chords or her body for a full concert performance.

Some observers speculated that she had lip-synched the Olympics show.

Only now, after spending years training "like an athlete", doing ballet and pilates several times a week, as well as attending voice therapy, does the singer feel ready to step out in front of 30,000 ecstatic ticket-holders.

"She is utterly determined," her French biographer Elisabeth Reynaud told AFP recently.

- Rumours and cancellations -

The "It's All Coming Back to Me Now" hitmaker has also used the time away from the concert circuit and recording studio to spend time with her children whom she credits as her prime motivation to get better.

She has two twin teenage boys, aged 15, and an older son in his twenties, all from her marriage to music producer Rene Angelil who discovered Dion as a 12-year-old when listening to a cassette sent by her mother.

Angelil, who was 26 years older than Dion, died in 2016 of throat cancer.

The Paris comeback will also be the first time in many years that Dion is performing for fans without feeling like she is covering up her illness.

She had been living with the condition for nearly two decades, she realises now.

But she had been trying to manage the symptoms until they became impossible to hide, with rumours of major health problems sparked by a string of concert cancellations in 2021 and 2022.

She has described taking higher and higher doses of the tranquiliser Valium in order to perform, putting her life at risk in the process.

"I did not understand that I could have gone to bed and stopped breathing. And you learn -- you learn through your mistakes," she confided to People magazine in 2024.

Fans will be eager to hear what Dion sounds like and whether her re-trained voice sounds as clear and powerful as the octave-busting one that catapulted her to fame in 1988 when she won the Eurovision Song Contest for Switzerland.

"I'm going to come onstage because I'm ready. And my vocal cords will not scare me, because I'm going to be ready, and I'm going to hit those notes," she told NBC two years ago.

N.Roberts--TNT