---
By Vanessa Thomas
TORONTO (Reuters) - Canadian singer Celine Dion, best known for the theme song to the blockbuster film ``Titanic,'' intends to fight her former drummer's lawsuit claims of wrongful dismissal, infringement of copyright and allegations that the pop diva lip-synced many of her live concerts, according to a court document filed Tuesday.
``The way it was said makes it sound like I'm not singing live at my shows, which is not true,'' Dion said in the statement Monday, adding:
``In the past, we've used instrumentation and voice samples on the up-tempo numbers. This just gives the dance tracks a bit more punch to enhance the live performance, but I think that's normal.''
Her former drummer, Peter Barbeau, made the accusations in a statement of claim, in which he is seeking C$5-million in damages, filed in early September.
``Many of the lead vocal portions of the songs performed by Celine Dion during her live performances are not sung by her but rather lip-synced to a prerecorded digital hard-disc recording of Celine Dion's voice,'' the suit said.
Barbeau claimed that because Dion lip-synced during her live concerts, extra pressure was placed on him as a drummer.
``The practice of the principal vocal performer not singing during live performances is highly unusual in the music industry,'' his statement of claim said.
In court documents, Barbeau also claimed he is the original composer of the song ``Dreaming of You'' and retains 40 percent of the interest and rights to it through his company, Bow River Music Inc.
The song was featured on Dion's multimillion-selling album ''Falling into You,'' which was released in March 1996.
Dion denied being involved in handling the publishing rights of the song, but said that ``the people who take care of my business have assured me that Peter has 100 percent control of his interest in the song.''
The drummer claimed that he was dismissed from his job in 1995 ``without reason, cause, explanation or settlement'' and has been unable to find comparable employment, the court document said.
``We're asking for what is due to him fairly and reasonably,'' said his lawyer, Howard Wolch. ``We've been in discussion (with some of the defendants' lawyers) to make a settlement.''
($1-$1.47 Canadian)
Reuters/Variety 20:32 10-12-99
Are they singing or not? - Oct. 11, 1999
Entertainment Report
Even if Madonna uses electronic aid
during in her concerts, is Celine doing the same?
Is she or lip-synching or live?
A past drummer of Celine Dion's,
Peter Barbeau, is attempting to sue the Diva from Quebec for firing him
for the wrong reason, along with usiong his copyright material.
In this suit, the drummer claims
that Celine lip-synchs to back-up recordings during live concerts.
This claim is inferring something that is not common practice in the music business during live shows.
That disagrees with other opinions
in the entertainment industry...who say that lip-synching is used all of
the time in up tempo songs - even if fans don't like it.
They also say that stars like Madonna,
Janet Jackson and the Spice Girls are some of the acts who use digital
recorded enhancements during live performancers.
Since part of Ms. Dion's appeal is her live vocal ability, this is a unusal claim.
Your perspective about all of this, will depend on whether the listening audience wishes to be mesmerized by a flashy concert spectacle or "if they only want to hear a singing...live performance.
(personally paraphrased)
GAYLE MacDONALD
The Globe and Mail
Saturday, October 9, 1999
Toronto -- A former drummer with Celine Dion's band, suing the Quebec-born chanteuse for wrongful dismissal and infringement of copyright, alleges that the megastar lip-synchs a good chunk of her live concerts, putting extra pressure on her drummer.
"Many of the lead vocal portions of the songs performed by Celine Dion during her live performances are not sung by her but rather lip-synched to a pre-recorded digital hard-disk recording sample of Celine Dion's voice," a statement of claim filed in Toronto by percussionist Peter Barbeau says.
The statement of claim contains allegations of fact not yet proved in court.
"The practice of the principal vocal performer not singing during live performances is highly unusual in the music industry," the suit says.
"As such, the combination of technical skill required by the drummer in such a position and performing with an artist of such renown as Celine Dion made the role of drummer in the band one of the most challenging and sought-after jobs by qualified drummers in the music industry."
Ms. Dion, a former child star born in Charlemagne, Que., a town 50 kilometres east of Montreal, has sold more than 100 million albums, CDs and cassettes.
She has also collected a slew of
awards, including Grammys and Junos, and is perhaps best known to the masses
for belting out the Oscar-winning tunes Beauty and the Beast and My Heart
Will Go On.
Mr. Barbeau joined Ms. Dion's touring
band in 1989 and was fired about five years later. He is seeking up to
$5-million in damages.
His lawyer, Howard Wolch of Toronto, would not comment yesterday on the case.
A spokesman for Ms. Dion's career-management company, Feeling Productions Inc., did not return calls.
The copyright allegation centres on the song, Dreaming of You, which was included on Ms. Dion's multimillion-selling album, Falling Into You.
Released in March, 1996, Falling Into You became the best-selling album released that year, topping the charts in 11 countries, and was honoured as Album of the Year and Best Pop Album at the 39th annual Grammy Awards.
The album has now sold more than 25 million copies worldwide, according to the Web site, http://www.Celineonline.com.
In the court documents, Mr. Barbeau said he composed the song with a partner, and retains 40-per-cent of the rights, title and interest to it through his company, Bow River Music Inc.
From the outset of his employment with the band, Mr. Barbeau said he accepted "lower wages than would normally be expected for providing similar services to any other artist of Dion's stature in the entertainment industry."
In the summer of 1995, the drummer alleges, he was dumped by band leader Claude Lemay "without reason, cause, explanation or settlement," the court papers say.
Since then, Mr. Barbeau has been jobless, and the documents allege that Ms. Dion and her entourage have left "the general public with the impression that he is incompetent or unable to perform publicly."
The lawsuit, filed with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, also names Ms. Dion's husband-manager René Angelil; two of the couple's companies, CRB Music Publishing and Feeling Productions; Montreal concert promoter Donald K. Donald Inc.; Sony Music Entertainment (Canada) Inc., and Warner Brothers Publications U.S. Inc.
Earlier this year, Forbes Magazine ranked Ms. Dion 13th in its Celebrity 100 list that measures both income and media buzz of athletes and entertainers.
The magazine estimated the singer
earned $55-million (U.S.) in 1998, a figure that surpassed Mel Gibson,
Garth Brooks and the Spice Girls. However, Ms. Dion did not pull in as
much as James Cameron, Michael Jordan, Oprah Winfrey or the Rolling Stones.
Oct. 2 - Most of my fellow rock critics
dismiss Celine Dion as a slick,
schmaltzy power balladeer. I find
it hard to argue with a five-octave soprano voice - and besides, isn't
a pop superdiva supposed to oversing, reaching for note-spinning climaxes?
And at least Dion enjoys performing, which is more than I can say for her peers - Whitney Houston is an ice queen in concert, and Mariah Carey is apparently too busy serial dating to tour. Dion has a natural Disney-style charm, and she turned it on at the grand opening of the Pepsi Center last night.
At the beginning of her set, the
Canadian singer rose onto an in-the-round
stage resplendent in a white gown,
singing "Let's Talk About Love.'' She then recognized a number of Columbine
survivors in the audience, not exactly letting the good times roll.
But from that point on, fans fell hard for Dion's expressive, elegant show. She shined on the epic "It's All Coming Back To Me Now'' and polished love songs like "Because You Loved Me,'' and she punctuated her ballads - "Tell Him'' (a duet with Barbra Streisand in the recorded version), a terrific "The Power Of Love'' - with broad arm movements and wrenching facial expressions.
And, of course, she couldn't help but thump her chest with her fist when she sang the stirring encore of "My Heart Will Go On,'' the "Titanic'' theme.
That kind of emotional delivery and big gesture was tempered with a low-key string of covers - Roberta Flack's "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,'' the Beatles' "Because,'' Eric Clapton's "Tears In Heaven,'' the pop standard "All The Way.''
The dance-pop numbers were harder for her to tackle - "Let's turn this place into the world's biggest, hottest disco!'' she shouted to introduce a medley of the Bee Gees' "Stayin' Alive'' and "You Should Be Dancing.''
Still, the sold-out crowd hung on Dion's between-song patter. She's big-eyed waif cute instead of model beautiful, and when she referenced the Colorado Avalanche and the team's general manager Pierre LaCroix (the best friend of her husband Rene Angelil), she wasn't above screwing up her face in a Bob & Doug MacKenzie impression.
So Dion did her part to make it a
memorable evening, although opening act Corey Hart was technically the
first to play the new venue. No one's heard from this Canadian since his
mid-'80s hits "Sunglasses At Night'' and "Never Surrender''
- guess these singers from the Great
White North stick up for each other.
The acoustics at the Pepsi Center? I'm no expert - heck, I lost most of my hearing at a Ted Nugent concert two decades ago. The sound was very good, but remember, we're talking about a multi-purpose arena, the home of the Avalanche and the Denver Nuggets - not, say, the Fillmore Auditorium or the Gothic Theatre, places designed with acoustics as the highest priority. The builders used special materials so sound wouldn't be pinging off concrete and steel, but they couldn't possibly, say, slope the ceilings or place baffles in certain areas.
But the biggest factors are still in the artist's hands - having a good sound man and people in all the seats. Dion had both. Touchdown.
Hope I'm being eloquent enough for future generations - I'm figuring they'll be looking this up when they bring Dion back to close the Can in 2424.
You don't walk into a Celine Dion concert looking for surprises from the petite French-Canadian mega-songstress. What you do expect is a healthy dose of the overblown pop ballads, especially the inescapable one from the "Titanic" movie that helped make her a superstar.
That's why the big finale to Dion's packed concert at the Kiel Center Sunday night was surprising. Dion proclaimed she would turn the Kiel Center into "the greatest, biggest, discotheque in the whole world." (Discotheque?) What made this statement so ridiculous was that Dion's songbook, more limited and less expansive than one might think considering her stature, includes nothing a self-respecting disco would play, save for a few dance remixes. So Dion, as she's prone to doing, reached into someone else's music catalog for inspiration. In this case, it was the Bee Gees and "Saturday Night Fever."
No one said all surprises were good. Watching Dion try on these toothless versions of "Stayin' Alive" and "You Should Be Dancing," complete with obviously long-practiced disco moves, was embarrassing. What was she thinking, indulging in this cheesiness when all everyone was waiting for was her climactic "My Heart Will Go On" (which came complete with a makeshift ship prop).
Dion has perfectly nailed down the dubious art of the power pop ballad, and sometimes people need to stick to what they do best. She's one of our most technically perfect singers, easily topping the likes of peers like Mariah Carey (a showoff voice that's too much) and Whitney Houston (a once great voice now greatly diminished). Dion's so good she's the only pop singer out there who can nearly out-Streisand Streisand - this despite Dion's chest-thumping tactics and her tendency to make every gesture a grand gesture.
Like her peers' material, Dion's
can be questionable, uninteresting and
repetitive, especially in concert.
That explains why a song like "Stayin' Alive" would make her show at the
expense of worthier efforts like "River Deep, Mountain High," "All By Myself"
or "If You Asked Me To" (note: These are all covers). "Love Can Move Mountains,"
"Treat Her Like a Lady" and "Declaration of Love" were also wasted efforts,
mostly serving as an excuse for Dion to strut around the heart-shaped stage
in the middle of Kiel and be super sassy with moves ranging from kung-fu
kicks to piano lounging.
Dion was best when effortlessly tackling
the slow stuff like "The Power of Love," "It's All Coming Back to Me Now,"
"Because You Loved Me," the R. Kelly ballad "I'm Your Angel" and a quaint
French-language song. The exception, ironically, would be "Tell Him," the
drama-filled duet with Streisand. In concert, a video image of Streisand
was superimposed next to Dion's live image, making it look like a quasi-duet
if you watched the screen and not the stage.
Strangely and hilariously, they
appeared to be trying to out-sing each other,so much so that you wondered
whose eyeballs would pop out of her head first.
An acoustic segment predictably featured her backup singers gathered around her while she offered stripped-down versions of her favorite songs - Roberta Flack's "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face," Frank Sinatra's "All the Way" and Eric Clapton's "Tears in Heaven."
One of Dion's many chatty moments addressed the concert's postponement from April, when she was originally scheduled to perform. "If I'm here tonight, it's because everything is all right," she said. She'd postponed because her husband/manager Rene Angelil was recovering from skin cancer surgery on his neck. Dion introduced Angelil, who was sitting in one of the sky boxes.
Singer Corey Hart, who wrote two songs for Dion's "Let's Talk About Love" CD, opened the concert.
Oct. 2 - Canadian pop singer Celine Dion opened up Denver's new Pepsi Center on Friday night by breaking its heart.
CDion opened with a dramatic rendition of her song, "Let's Talk About Love,'' in which she was joined for the last refrain by a chorus of kids, many bearing the now instantly recognizable "We are . . . Columbine'' T-shirts commemorating the nation's worst high school shooting April 20.
Then she asked the nearly 20,000 people filling the arena "to be serious.''
Dion spoke to the whole arena, but gave special attention to the front row of seats immediately at stage right, where sat a collection of Columbine survivors, their families and the families of some students who were killed in the shooting spree.
"You know, we do a lot of shows, but this show has a different feeling,'' Dion said to a suddenly hushed crowd of nearly 20,000. "It means something different for us, for all of us.''
"We love you, Columbine,'' came a woman's distant voice, drifting down from high in the rafters.
"Your pain and suffering was felt around the world,'' Dion continued. "Everyone grieved with you, everyone prayed for you, everyone wanted to comfort you and everyone cared, and they still do.''
She dedicated the performance to the Columbine community, but didn't mention that she earlier had pledged her income from the show - estimated by Pepsi Center officials as being in the hundreds of thousands of dollars - to the ongoing victims' relief effort. The gift was announced in small cards handed to concertgoers as they entered the building.
"I would like to ask them to accept a token of peace on behalf of all of those who have suffered and lost,'' she said.
As Dion's band eased into "Columbine, Friend of Mine,'' the song written by brothers and Columbine students Aaron and Josh Cohen, the chorus members delivered white roses to the honored Columbine guests.
Dion followed, greeting the gathered survivors, including Patrick Ireland, the student whose fall from a second story window at the school gripped people watching the Columbine drama as it unfolded on television.
"She's got a great voice. And what she's doing, it's just great. And this is a great place,'' Ireland had said earlier in the evening, looking up from his floor seat at the slowly filling arena. "It's awesome.''
For Dion's fans, the gesture and the significant donation simply buttressed their admiration for the singer, who has been catapulted to fame in recent years by several hit songs, most notably the theme song to the 1997 movie "Titanic.''
"The fact that she's not just doing it for herself makes me love her even more,'' said Denver resident Jennifer Peppmuller, 25, who was there celebrating the birthday of her friend, Becki Moeller, 33.
"It's very admirable,'' said Scott Vanderpool, who with his wife, Kayce, also had floor seats for the Pepsi Center's public inauguration. "As much as these tickets cost, she stood to make a lot. It was a very, very admirable thing to do.''
Kayce Vanderpool added: "She's got a big heart.'' x
...All I know is I didnt like the O show....I didnt like O, and even Celine has done better interviews.
Thursday, 18-Nov-1999 18:04:57
And yeah Rene sounded bad.....who knows whats up with him. Only time will tell, what do ya want? Him to get on camera and start bellowing? No. He's gonna smile and look happy. Same with Celine, although she did her best with a big smile to gripe about how much she's not into her music anymore. I mean, HELLO, that was really a sock in the face to me....and Im sure other fans too. We know she's tired, but to throw it in our faces SO hard, I mean God....may as well just drove a knife through my tear ducts.
But they still looked good.
The show was flat as a fart to me, same old Q's-----same old A's. And O seemed like a real, oh, rhymes-with-rich. The whole show was one big BLOW in the face.....and I hated it. Tomorrow, I'll be taping Days of Our Lives right over it, Id rather see a fake soap opera than a real one. Pugh on Oprah.
Shawnna
Thursday, 18-Nov-1999 16:27:48
I am so proud of Celine for what she said on Oprah. She is so modest, caring and loving. She is a gift from God! SHe said that she doesn't want to grow old with gold records and money, because that is not what is important to her, her family is what is most important to her. SHe is not selfish like other singers. She doesn't care about money, because if she did , then she wouldn't be taking a break.I cried when she talked about when Karine died, how it brought her closer to Heaven. What an Angel! She is the most wonderful singer in the world, and I know the next time she comes back she is going to be better then ever!
JENNIFER
Celine Dion
Sony
Rating: **
Such a generous girl, our Celine. Other singers might add a new song or two to their greatest-hits collection. Celine gives us nine road-tested hits and seven -- count 'em, seven -- new songs to tide us over a musical hiatus that, we are told, will be devoted to golf and babies. But then, she's always been fond of the grand gesture, the idea that too much is just enough. This time, too much includes a creepy, sterile eyond-the-grave duet with Frank Sinatra, an overwrought reading of the Ewan MacColl chestnut, The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face and a new tune from the jokers who wrote that Titanic song you couldn't escape a few years ago, all of them overproduced by David Foster.
-posted by Ric
Over three years ago, it was reported
that Phil Spector walked out on recording sessions with Dion because
of what he labled Celine's "commitment to mediocrity."
With this in mind, it's no surprise
there, even though she is often compared to Streisand, Dion's doesn't bring
to her song material to the same intellectually, emotional singing level
as Babs'. Dion goes instead for a more powerful, belting-out vocal
style that "slam-dunks" overboard notes with very little regard to the
worded meaning of the lyrics. But there are two songs on this album, "All
The Way...A Decade Of Song" (with greatest-hits and seven new songs) that
reveal Celine is trying to sway from her usual style(maybe learning something
from the Spector incidennt). As part of this album change, Celine's voice
reverently duets with Frank Sinatra..with a subtle, vocal perfection on:
"All the Way". This song shines because of Celine's "under-singing"
...maybe out of respect for her duet partner. It definitely has a ghost
of chance to raise even the listening ears of most..even if some of the
the other new songs won't.
You may be interested to know that
Sinatra was already dead when this duet was put together.
And Dion's "less-is-more" voice during
"The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face"(previously sung by Roberta Flack)
has a very quiet, sensuality to it.
If only Celine would alter a bit
more her usual, very predictable recordings of frothy love songs, she'd
be like "buttah".
EOL-School GRADE: C-
FAN- Cool GRADE: B
*With most songs, Celine Dion doesn't
have to be just like "buttah"....since her voice is still "the cream of
the crop".
Paraphrased by: Jan
At the peak of her career, Celine Dion faced her greatest crisis - with her husband, René's sicknes - and now will leave the world's stage with her final good-bye concert.
As Celine Dion checked into the Beverly Hills Hotel, her Los Angeles hotel, to tape an episode of the VH1 Storytellers, she took a swim in one of the hotel's secluded pools. Just before she took her swim, today's the queen of pop music began to think about about who else might have taken a swim in this clear blue water -Perhaps Clark Gable or, maybe, Marilyn Monroe? She also began to wonder whether or not, decades from now, another young star may remember that she had swum in this water too. The next day, Dion, 31, sat poolside..all dressed in black leather pants and a white top, ready to put aside any thoughts about fame. She is ready to leave the private pools, private jets, the entourage of hairdressers, makeup artists, backup singers and publicists who all work for "Celine the star". Celine wants to be with the man she loves, along with trying to have a baby and live a more normal life.
Celine will be saying farewell in her taped one-hour concert special on CBS, on November 24. After that time, she will perform in two other concerts - on New Year's Eve in Montreal and a private concert for high rollers in Las Vegas on January 1st. Then , she claims, that will be it: "I'm stopping for at least two years." No recording, no performing. (unless she gets an amazing offer).
Dion has been publicly talking about
this career break for over three years. Since she never does it, no one
really believed her, especially when she began another worldwide concert
tour and released another album, "All the Way..A Decade of Song", a collection
of seven new songs and her greatest hits.
Her decision for this break became
even more important since this last April when her husband and manager,
René Angélil, 57, (26 years older than her), found an egg-sized,
lump on his neck and which was diagnosed as metastatic squamous cell carcinoma.
Now, instead of just talking about a break, Celine Dion actually had to
take one.
Celine said, "I told myself, 'Life
is sending you a message,'" says Dion pensively, a strong flavor of native
French in her voice. "This message was: It's about time you do something
else. It's time that you are there for each other, that you get back into
reality, be with your family and friends. You don't want to have a bouquet
and suddenly be the only flower left, and everyone else is dead around
you. Show business is not your life."
In person Dion is not really like
the very dramatic, chest-thumping diva who is known worldwide for singing
"My Heart Will Go On," the theme from Titanic. In fact, Celine seems
rather shy and private. Although her husband's sickness has made the headlines
of tabloids, she has resisted speaking about it. Last September when she
and Angélil attended a Tiger Woods charity event in Las Vegas, many
reporters were warned ahead not to ask any questions about his health.
But today, as Celine approaches her farewell performances..and with Angélil
in remission from his cancer (for the past seven months)..Dion is speaking
about the difficult moments of their traumatic past year.
"I am so proud of the way I reacted,"
Celine says. "I became so strong, so in charge, so in control. I could
have fallen on the floor and started to cry my whole body; all the tears
were in my body."
A lump was found in April, in the middle of a busy concert tour. While Dion and her husband were on a plane to Dallas, he felt a bulge in his throat. She and Angélil both had recently had colds for a two weeks, but Dion says she felt better, while Angélil was still coughing a lot. When he touched his throat on the right side, he found it was swollen. "It was big,"says Celine, "bigger than an egg. I said, 'Does it hurt when you swallow?' and he said no." Dion, who is very obsessive about throat problems (even to the degree of not talking or laughing the day before or of a concert), was very concerned.
Subsequently, Angélil went
to the doctors who examined him, along with scheduling him for surgery
that night.
One of the doctors told Celine,
"It doesn't look like a cyst. We have to check, but it doesn't look good."
Dion wanted to cancel her concert,
but Angélil insisted she continue. The remainder of that night is
still kind of foggy. Dion says, "I don't even remember where the
concert was or where I flew to."
At the hospital after the concert, Dion stayed at the hopital until 5 am, until Angélil awakened and told her to get some sleep back at the hotel. Over three hours later, her friend Coco Lacroix (wife of Pierre Lacroix, general manager and president of the Colorado Avalanche - from Denver to visit with René and Celine), knocked on the door. "She said, 'René needs you,'" Celine recalls. "I never got dressed so fast in my life. The ride in the limousine was forever. I got to the hospital and my husband was seated on the edge of the bed. He couldn't eat. He couldn't swallow," she said. "I was afraid René was going to die, but, of course, even before the cancer I was afraid every day he was going to die."
That day, which just happened to be her 31st birthday, Celine Dion changed from Angélil's protégé to become his caretaker. Immediately, she canceled concert dates, clearing her tour schedule from between April 13 to May 7. Celine saying, "I was there for him, and I felt great about it." "René had never really opened up his heart to me. He had talked to me as a manager, as an artist, as a lover, but never as a man who feels not so strong as a man. That made me feel very special."
Angélil, who is with Celine
at this hotel, talks openly about his wife's support during those
frightening days in the hospital. "I had 38 treatments of radiation,"
he said, "and she came with me to
every one. There is not a word that exists that can express how much I
love her." In this romantic relationship, Celine and René seem to
have everything, except children. Dion has been unsuccessfully trying to
get pregnant for a few years now. She still has every hope of sucessfully
conceiving before her farewell concert. But there's also the chance that
Angélil's cancer (and radiation therapy) could make conception an
impossibility. There have been some reports that Angélil, who already
has three children from two previous marriages, had some of his sperm frozen
before undergoing radiation. He says, "We took some precautions, some
steps in modern science to be able to have children. We want to have a
baby. We're trying right now."
As concerned as he is about his health,
Angélil, always the manager, never fails to notice a career
move of major importance. He realizes how much Celine is risking by breaking
away from a career that is still peaking(Dion has sold over a 100 million
albums worldwide). "It's a gamble," Rene says, "a big gamble. But I'm a
gambler, and it all started on a gamble, anyway."
Dion's whole career been filled
fighting the odds:
How many poor Canadian young
girls(he youngest of 14 children) are going to become the most recognized,
successful singer of this decade? Some have mentioned that Dion was not
really beautiful. In fact, since she was very skinny and had very bad teeth
many kids at school made fun of her by calling her a vampire. But Celine
could really sing and had been singing songs at her parents'(Adhemar and
Therese) restaurant in Charlemagne, Quebec(a town 30 miles east of Montreal).
Dion's life really changed at age 12, when she and her brother(Michel)
sent Angélil(a well-known Canadian personal manager), a homemade
cassette tape of Celine singing a song that was written by her mother.
Angélil says, "When Celine came to my office with her mother, she
didn't say a word."
"I asked her to sing. I said, 'Pretend
you are in a 3,000-seat theater.' She stood up, as if she was looking at
the balcony in a theater, and now she wasn't shy, she was sure of herself.
It was incredible. She made me cry. And at that moment, I knew she would
become a star." Angélil mortgaged his home for $80,000 to finance
Dion's first two albums(in French...when she was a teen). She was a success
in her home area at 14 and even did concert tours in Europe, but Dion still
spoke only French and had a couple of cosmetic problems. Angélil
says, "She was cute, and I was captivated by her eyes." "But she had problems
with her teeth, and was pretty skinny."
Angélil's suggested a one
year break from performing when Celine was 16, so she could learn
English (at Berlitz) and change her looks somewhat. Angélil transformed
his Eliza Doolittle into his own fair lady. Dion says, "I didn't ask questions,"
"because I trusted him."
After eight years of working together,
the business turned into romance for us. On a night in Dublin, when she
was 20, Angélil kissed her good night on the lips.
Celine says, "My blood changed.
I could hear my knees shaking." "I sat on the edge of the bed that night
and I knew I was going to make love to this man for the first time. I knew
this was going to be the man of my life. The love was so strong," she says,"it
just took us by storm."
René and Celine will renew their wedding vows(married in 1994)...in Las Vegas in January 2000. It is not a surprise that in her husband's time of need, Dion is very willing to do what is usually unheard of for any artist at her degree of success...to leave it all..and take an extended break.
David Ritz-a writer of star biographies says,"It is so rare," "Stars can't get off the treadmill. And then it becomes like an addiction. They need it."
Even if some think the showbiz life
is addictive, Dion is being forced somewhat by destiny to kick the showbiz
habit.
Celine says, "The closer I get to
the end, the happier I am."
Although many women would be eager
to ride in limousines, have a group of assistants and always live in the
spotlight, Celine Dion, as she sips her water says, almost unbelievably,
that she can't wait to cook her own lunches, shop for her own groceries,
drive her car and spend some time with her husband at home.
Celine says, "For everything he
has given me, now I can do something for him."
"I don't only want to be his wife.
I want to be good to him, make a difference in his life. Now I know I can."
Paraphrased by: Jan
When Viacom,
the entertainment giant that owns MTV, announced on September 7 its $39
billion acquisition of CBS, the press joked that viewers could look forward
to such new CBS shows as "The Real Old World" and "Murder She Rocked".
But CBS
may be the network that's been rockin', after all. Despite its reputation
as an entertainment center for the Social Security set, CBS had been mining
the Billbored pop charts for ratings gold long before the Viacom deal was
announced. The network's success with specials starring such megahit
machines as CELINE DION and Shania Twain also contradicts the industry
belief that, apart from awards shows, music does not play on the broadcast
networks. Remember ABC's 1997 U2 special, which went down in history
as the network's lowest-rated hour? And then just last month, Fox's
Sheryl Crow spotlight, "Central Park in Blue", drew a miniscule 3.8 million
viewers, the smallest audience for the time period in that network's history.
"The music
audience has become so diffuse," says Janeen Bjork, senior vice president-director
of programming at Seltel, an advertising firm that advises stations on
programming. "It is increasingly rare to find a performer who can
work on a network level." The exceptions, Bjork notes, are Garth
Brooks, whose specials have done well on NBC, and [CELINE] DION and Twain,
whose CBS specials in 1998 and earlier this year, respectively, drew 16
million viewers apiece. Jack Sussman, the CBS vice president for
specials who came to the network after stints at MTV Latin America and
VH1, says he was convinced [CELINE] DION and Twain would work on CBS after
attending their concerts. "You go to a CELINE [DION] or Shania
arena show and look around at who is there, and it's the CBS audience,"
he says. "It's baby-boomer parents with their kids. There's
only a finite group of artists who have that kind of draw."
To capitalize
on its success with pop and country divas, CBS is airing new specials with
[CELINE] DION and Twain during Thanksgiving week. This music jam
will culminate November 26, when heartthrob Ricky Martin appears in his
first network special. If this lineup doesn't satisfy the musical
tastes of millions, CBS, also has a Christmas show planned, in which Martin,
[CELINE] DION and such superstars as Babyface, Gloria Estefan, Charlotte
Church and Harry Connick Jr. will sing their favorite yuletide tunes.
According to industry sources, CBS also has a Christmas special in the
works with pop singer Amy Grant.
CBS president
Les Moonves acknowledges the network's maverick status when it comes to
music programming. "No doubt, we've flown against the conventional
wisdom," he says. "You can say the audience can get whoever they
want on MTV, VH1, TNN or CMT. It's the same reason a variety show
like the old Ed Sullivan show won't work in the era of talk shows and cable,
with music and comedy acts [appearing] everywhere. However, there
is a small handful of artists who will appeal to a broad network audience
and who can be presented in a way that goes beyond what the music channels
do. Obviously the record companies think so, too. After all,
these specials are like one-hour commercials for the artists."
Indeed,
Twain and [CELINE] DION saw a big leap in CD sales after their programs
aired. "When we did the first special with CELINE [DION] on CBS,
you could see the numbers go up," says John Doelp, coexecutive producer
of several of [CELINE] DION's CDs. "Back when we were first thinking
about doing a special, it seemed like HBO was the only place to go.
But when the CBS option appeared, we jumped on it."
The idea
for the first [CELINE] DION special was conceived at the 1998 Grammys,
when Moonves ran into Tommy Mottola, chairman of Sony Music Entertainment,
parent of DION's label, Sony 550 Music, and Martin's label, Columbia.
"Tommy introduced CELINE [DION] to Les," says Doelp. "Everybody came
away from that night thinking we should all do something together."
The Ricky
Martin showcase was also inspired by artist's explosive performance at
the Grammys last spring, says Mottola. "CBS was wise and immediately
wanted to do it," he says.
"Hey it
was me along with a lot of America that discovered Ricky Martin at the
Grammys," says Moonves, who notes that the network is also home to awards
ceremonies for the Country Music Association and the Academy of Country
Music. "It's all part of who we are as a network. It's why
you'll see Reba McEntire show up on an episode of "Touched by an Angel"
or a CBS movie starring Amy Grant."
Given the
success and appeal of [CELINE] DION and Twain, some observers wonder if
Ricky Maritn will fit the CBS profile. "Country artists and someone like
CELINE DION with mainstream crossover appeal, that's CBS's audience," says
Paul Schulman, president of the media-buying firm Schulman/Advanswers NY.
"Ricky Maritn is a gamble. He might play better on a network with
younger demographics."
Sony's
Mottola disagrees. "Ricky Martin is not just a singer," he says.
"He is an entertainer with the same kind of crossover appeal as [CELINE]
DION. He will deliver".
Everyone expected nothing less than a grand star entrance to the stage, along with a "Titanic" performance. The crowd was not disappointed, since that's just what her Majesty Dion gave to her concert listeners...a jewel of a performance.
The regal Celine Dion ascended on this Omaha round, heart-shaped stage by rising slowly but elegantly from it's center of pulsation...engulfed in glowing spotlights and mystical fog. The stage and royal entrance was as radiantly majestic as the entire concert.
You could feel the excitement of audience (over 9,500 people) with their rousing applause and cheers. Their anticipation and expectation for a spectacular show was being fulfilled by Celine...wearing a stylishly-daring, white kimono as she rose from the center of the stage singing "Let's Talk About Love."
Although Dion is very thin, she can really belt a song with her very powerful pipes! Local children also joined her on stage to join her in this song, which is the title track of her last hit album.
After the first song, the French-Canadian diva quickly removed the kimono to begin a rousing, uptempo version of "Declaration of Love." With her band and back-up singers, Dion also sang "Because You Loved Me," which seemed to especially delight her excited fans.
Dion said, "It's about time I came here," referring to another Omaha concert that was canceled earlier in the year so she could spend time with her husband, who was going through treatment for skin cancer.
Celine also said, "I want you to know," .. "If I am here tonight, it's because everything is all right."
The audience showed their thanks to Celine with several standing ovations, along with giving her many bouquets of flowers and cards.
Even if you don't really appreciate Dion's love ballads or her sometimes corny stage act, you still must admit, the lady has awesome pipes. Dion - in the same style of Tina Turner, James Brown and Elvis Presley, let her voice rock the roof with many songs, including; "It's All Coming Back to Me Now."
During her two virtual duets with Barbra Streisand, for the song "Tell him" and for her Bee Gees song, Celine inspired loud cheers as she sang her part live..as her duet partners appeared on pre-recorded video, which could be seen on four huge screens surrounding the stage, as well as about 10 huge TV monitors that surrounded the stage floor.
One of the most striking segments of this performance was when Dion acoustically sang a few of her "favorite songs." The crowd heard a very sweet version of the Beatles' "Because," Frank Sinatra's "All the Way," a subtle version of Roberta Flack's "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" and Eric Clapton's "Tears in Heaven." Dion's voice was right on the mark...a musical "bullseye" with her rendition of these songs.
However, Celine Dion singing her more familiar songs, drew the biggest cheers, especially one song. Can you guess which one?
After a fast change of clothing,
Dion appeared again in a pink gown to sing her very well-known "My Heart
Will Go On," the "Titanic" hit...from the movies soundtrack.
As Celine Dion reached the climax
of the song (on the bow of a ship-like stage..rails, wind and all) so did
the crowd with their own "Titanic" round of applause.
-paraphrased by Jan's words-
Tuesday, September 28, 1999
(Colombus concert)
By Curtis Schieber
For The Dispatch
Celine Dion rose from her heart- shaped stage in the middle of Value City Arena last night like an angel. To the capacity crowd, she was. Feeling as much like an old-fashioned revival as a concert, Dion's show offered a simple mixture of blind optimism and show-biz love.
Jazz pianist Brad Mehldau theorized to The Dispatch recently that the film Titanic was a blockbuster because it contained not one shred of irony. Which explains why Dion and the film were perfect partners for the movie's theme My Heart Will Go On.
It also explains the near-religious fervor that fans expressed for the singer last night as she gave the emotionally hungry something to hold on to.
Dion opened with Let's Talk About
Love, from her hit album of the same title.
She stuck to the suggestion nearly
all of the night, offering simple platitudes about love's salvation in
song and in between.
The message had little variation. Even Carole King's The Reason, which includes a verse interjecting doubt, found its place among the wailing odes to love that filled the evening.
Thankfully, the singer varied the tempos more than a few times. Treat Her Like A Lady showed she can sing soul; the Beatles' Because showed good taste.
The nonstop bombast was marked by
technical flash and a couple of guest
appearances, most notably by Barbra
Streisand -- on video. The name-dropping scheme allowed Dion a duet which
was showy but wasn't complimentary, as Streisand's rich timbre outshone
Dion's.
The opening selection featured a singing circle made of the Columbus Children's Choir.
The singer's much-heralded vocal chops weren't the mark of perfection. Sailing high and even reaching low, she rang notes like a tuning fork -- that is, the notes were as long as they were loud. Short, quieter notes revealed a slipping intonation, which wouldn't be a problem with most singers. But most pop singers don't do duets with Luciano Pavarotti.
All in all, Dion re-created the magic that has made her a star of astronomical proportions with a show that was as much a tribute to the power of positive thinking as a celebration of song.
A rousing reception met 1980s hitmaker Corey Hart, who summed up the impact of his set best as he left the stage, thanking the audience for "remembering me.''
Celine Dion shows off her band and her multi-octave voice at Marine Midland Arena Monday night.
By ANTHONY VIOLANTI - News Critic -9/21/99
Real divas don't sweat, but sometimes
they cry.
Celine Dion's teary eyes looked
real Monday night as she turned a packed Marine Midland Arena into a combination
pity party and rollicking concert extravaganza.
" I'm a little nervous but I want you to know that if I'm here tonight, it's because everything is all right, " Dion said early in her two-hour show. The event was originally set for last April but was postponed because of her husband's cancer treatment.
The night was filled with the usual arena pop show trappings including grandiose sets, laser lights and ego-stroking chatter to go along with a virtual duet with Barbra Streisand, the Bee Gees and a mock Titanic finale.
Dion's life, however, may be the biggest factor in her concerts. The singer's problems, like her songs, are filled with drama, pathos and love. The litany of recent crises includes: a husband, Rene Angelil, recovering from cancer; a desperate attempt to have a baby; and an upcoming semi-retirement from show business.
Put it all together and you have more plot twists than " Days of Our Lives. " It's enough to make Barbara Walters cry and Dion seems to bask in such despair as she milks the turmoil for as much audience mileage possible.
" The last few months have been pretty rocky and difficult for Rene and myself, " Dion told the hushed gathering of worshiping fans. " But he's shown so much courage in getting the treatments and I'm so proud of him. I love him so much. "
Dion made a regal entrance dressed in a flowing, white kimono on a platform that slowly rose from beneath the middle of a heart-shaped stage. At first, she stood alone in the center of the stage and belted out the opening notes of her power ballad, " Let's Talk About Love. "
Soon, Dion was joined by her band. But that wasn't all. A group of youngsters ran up on stage and formed a circle around Dion as she sang. She stood in the middle, twirling and swirling like an angelic cheerleader.
That, in a nutshell, is Celine Dion's magic. She's able to take maudlin kitsch and make it seem straight from the heart to her fans.
This night wasn't all tears and ballads. Dion shed her kimono to reveal a tight pair of white slacks and silver metallic top. She vamped her way around the stage to the second number, " Declaration of Love. " Dion, willowy and rail-thin, seemed taller and larger than life. She showed a dancer's edge to her moves and was sultry and elegant.
But her booming voice was made for love songs. She brought down the house with a couple of soul-stirring ballads from the past: " Because You Loved Me " and " It's All Coming Back To Me. "
Then, Dion, got back to a bouncy mood. She introduced Sabres' star Dominik Hasek, who was sitting in the crowd. " Where are you Dominator? " Dion asked. Hasek took a bow as Dion said, " I shook his hand and let me tell you something, the kid is in shape. "
Dion wasn't finished with sports talk. " What about Doug Flutie and the Buffalo Bills! Whoa, what a game. We're going to the Super Bowl. "
The highlight of the night was when she toned down the glamour and lights and stood center stage for a moving acoustic set. Dion's vocals were riveting as she sang what she called her personal favorites, including Roberta Flack's " The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face " ; " Because, " by the Beatles; Eric Clapton's " Tears In Heaven " ; and closed with Frank Sinatra's " All the Way. "
The only lull was a labored virtual duet with a film version of Barbra Streisand on " Tell Him. " Sometimes, Dion tries too hard and this one just didn't work.
Dion made up for that with a raucous tribute to the Bee Gees and " Saturday Night Fever. " She changed into a gray pantsuit and turned the arena into Buffalo's biggest disco. No concert with Celine would be complete without " My Heart Will Go On " from the hit film " Titanic. " The stage set included what looked like a boat railing as Dion, dressed in a pink gown, came on board to sing the never-ending love song.
Opening act Corey Hart put on a rousing performance. The former MTV star during the mid-'80s sang his big hits, " Sunglasses at Night " and " Never Surrender. "
An abbreviated version of this review ran in the city edition of the Sunday Journal. This is the final version.
PROVIDENCE -- It's not as if Celine Dion had to, but she did tell a sold-out audience Saturday night at the Providence Civic Center how she and her husband, Rene Angelil, are faring since Angelil was diagnosed in the spring with skin cancer.
The diagnosis led Dion to postpone her planned April concert in Rhode Island. ``If I'm here tonight,'' Dion said onstage, ``it's because everything is all right.''
With things in order, Dion, who emerged as a leading '90s pop diva, brought a performance with abundant charm and adequate singing strength.
Divas like drama. That's why Dion made a grand entrance as colored lights twirled and the heroic instrumental from ``My Heart Will Go On,'' the Titanic theme song played. Dion rose out of the stage floor on a dais.
Performing on a well-used heart-shaped stage that offered 360-degree sight lines (albeit several times of her back), Dion showed in such songs as ``It's All Coming Back To Me Now'' that her work is unabashedly maudlin.
Yet in a twist to love ballads she's known for, Dion filled her stage show -- to mixed effectiveness -- with other musical styles.
She swapped uptempo songs with slower ballads that allowed her to display more vocalism. But her reggae lilt in ``Treat Her Like A Lady'' was goofy.
Each of three costume changes introduced new plot lines to the highly choreographed show. Such production effects as a glittering disco ball and a costume change to bell-bottoms made Dion's rendition of ``Stayin' Alive'' amusing, but it ran too long and was a needling distraction.
The song nearly derailed the show -- but didn't.
Dion is criticized for not writing her own songs. Indirectly, she addressed that onstage, saying, ``There's so many beautiful songs.''
Then, she sang songs of Eric Clapton and Roberta Flack, giving them such a fine interpretation that it's too bad that element of the show didn't run longer. Dion's confident ``The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,'' a song recorded by Flack, was particularly stirring.
Dion played The Bee Gees and Barbra Streisand on videotape to perform duets, rather than carting in unknown back-up singers. Here, Streisand on tape, rather than Dion onstage, turned in one of the most buoyant singing efforts in ``Tell Him.'' Dion also piped in violinist Taro Hakase on videotape. Hakase gave the instrumental performance of the night, allowing his instrument to trade vigorous lines with Dion's voice.
Opener Corey Hart warmed up the crowd with a set slow to the punch, but he eventually delivered ample pre-grunge rock.
Hart doesn't resonate as a rock pianist in the way of Bruce Hornsby. Yet he played sufficiently, in newer songs from last year's Jade, to begin the set. The singer and songwriter isn't a household name, but Hart knows Never Surrender and Sunglasses at Night are anthems of eccentric '80s pop rock.
Hart launched into Sunglasses like
a theater act , wryly turning the piano he relied on for his lesser-known
new songs into a stage prop. Standing atop the instrument, he dramatically
donned dark shades in the darkened arena, then dove into the carefree single,
a Top 10 song in 1984.
By Joan Anderman, Globe Correspondent,
Celine Dion is Fabulous. That's with a capital F, because one doesn't have to care much for her soft-pop ballads or high-drama stylings or sparkly pantsuits to know that the girl can put over a song. She's got those huge, held, high notes. She propels herself around a heart-shaped stage with gestures that are as crisp and concise, as brisk and gracefully studied as her vocal licks. She pauses in perfect intervals to feel the love, to soak up a standing ovation, to wipe away a runaway tear - all of which came three songs into her set, when she addressed the recent news of her husband's cancer by saying, ''If I'm here, it's because everything is OK.''
Dion is a true-blue diva. She can visit Boston twice during the same tour (she opened this worldwide roadshow at the FleetCenter just over a year ago), duplicate the concert tune-for-tune, most likely note-for-note, probably for the same audience, minus 1,000 or so.
The concert wasn't, surprisingly, a sellout. ''She sort of got lost in the Backstreet Boys craze,'' the FleetCenter's Jim Delaney said.
But the teenage idols were long gone
and forgotten Friday night, as Dion delivered the goods for grown-ups.
As befits her status, the evening began with a miniature overture - angelic
choral tones that hinted ever so slightly at the ''Titanic'' theme, now
also the Celine theme.
Searchlights scanned the arena,
anxious for a star to alight on, and finally Dion rose from the stage,resplendent
in a stark cream kimono. She launched right into ''Let's Talk About Love,''
the title track from last year's gazillion-selling album, joined midway
by a group of children in shorts and sneakers who looked altogether too
young to be talking about love at all. It was the sort of theatrics most
ntertainers save for a second-half climax.
Dion was in beautiful voice. But pristine as her instrument is on a power ballad, Dion's shimmery soprano doesn't always translate to other genres, especially in a far-less-forgiving live setting.
On ''Declaration of Love,'' her minor disco-rocker, Dion sounded downright shrill and overreaching. She shows her greatest depth on the treacliest numbers.
Dion literally rescues songs like
''Because You Loved Me'' and ''It's All Coming Back to Me Now'' with
her sheer mastery of tone and tempo, with her utter control navigating
the frothy emotional
whitewater.
A six-piece band, as capable and
unobtrusive as a pit orchestra at an awards ceremony, supplied the instrumental
tracks to
Dion's vocalizing, and three stupendous
harmony singers nearly stole the spotlight on several occasions, among
them a thick, smoky jazz arrangement of Sinatra's ''All the Way,'' performed
during an acoustic set of Dion's favorite tunes. Roberta Flack's ''First
Time Ever I Saw His Face,'' the Beatles' ''Because,'' and Eric Clapton's
''Tears in Heaven'' worked like a double-edged sword, however.
They showcased Dion's ability to
put a distinctive stamp on a famous cover song (no simple feat), but also
suggested just how much more gratifying it would be if she filled her own
repertoire with richer material.
Time seems to have stood still for
Dion's fellow Canadian Corey Hart, who churned out mild pop-rock hits (''Sunglasses
at Night,'' ''Never Surrender'') in the '80s. It was a perfectly matched
bill, one that delivered a very lucky Hart straight back into the
arms of his audience.
Celine Dion is one of the world’s biggest selling artists, her last album went platinum 6 times, and now she's temporarily giving up her career to spend more time with her family. Her fans have been prepared to pay large sums, to see her last concerts for a while. Some fans have contacted companies such as Total Entertainment for tickets.
The agency is based in South London and sells ticket packages for most of the big pop concerts. However, Weekend Watchdog spoke to one group of fans who paid the company to see Celine close up at Wembley Stadium, but ended up seeing her from afar.
Rachel and Paul Hardy booked a package
with Total Entertainment in October 1998, for the concert which was held
on July 10th 1999. They ordered tickets for themselves, and four other
fans, in total paying £1,034. The company marketed the tickets as
the "Golden Circle Ticket" and the fans were promised that the ticket was
to be:
"...on the pitch and is seated immediately
next to the stage... Concert tickets will be issued with your official
programme on arrival".
However, Rachel and her friends didn’t
actually receive their tickets until two hours before the concert began,
and only then realised that their seats were not situated where they first
thought. The fans believed that they had paid for first class tickets,
but they were actually seated high on the side of Wembley Stadium. Rachel
says:
"I'd waited nine months for this
to happen, and then to find out we weren't in the seats we'd promised -
I just cried."
The Hardy party of six found themselves
seated in Block 126, Row 35, along with two other Total Entertainment customers
Charlotte Haslam and her friend.
They were seated 190 feet from the
stage, which was not in Wembley’s definition of the golden circle seating
area (the first 12 rows). Two other annoyed Total Entertainment customers
also contacted Weekend Watchdog, they were seated on the pitch, but in
Block 13 with tickets worth just £40.
Paul Hardy complained to Total Entertainment,
and received a poor customer service. He says:
"Total Entertainment's response
was to get lost and to not bother them. I mean they were very very rude
to be honest."
Total Entertainment told Weekend
Watchdog that fans who booked with them on the first day tickets went on
sale did receive "Golden Circle" seats. The customers we heard from booked
on later days, and received mostly "Golden Tribune" tickets, as those were
the only tickets available. Total Entertainment claims our customers were
told approximately where in the stadium they would be - though the fans
deny they were. The company says its package was cheaper than other officially
advertised deals and was very reasonable.
bbc online
Definitely NOT in brief...
© La Presse Canadienne, 1999
Celine Dion gets star on Walk of
Fame
Celine Dion nuzzles her husband Rene Angelil as he admires her star in the Canadian Walk of Fame. (CP/Frank Gunn)
ANDREW FLYNN
TORONTO (CP) - Celine Dion, already
an immortal in the world of pop music, has had her name carved in stone
- or at least concrete. Dion's star on the Walk of Fame was unveiled Friday,
just in front of the Royal Alexandra Theatre on downtown King Street.
Apologizing for her late arrival
- due to a late flight and traffic - Dion gracefully accepted a trophy
commemorating the event.
"I want to say thank you for waiting
for me," Dion said as about 300 fans gathered for the event cheered. "I
know if we have the chance to be here today it's because of all the fans.
"And I want to say a big thank you to all the fans from Quebec who were the first to support me . . . . You are with me always."
The Charlemagne, Que., pop diva joins dozens of Canadian luminaries of the entertainment, sports and arts fields - from pianist Glenn Gould to hockey star Wayne Gretzky - who have had stars in their honour chiselled into downtown sidewalks.
Dion also thanked Toronto Mayor Mel
Lastman, who presented her with the key to the city.
"Are you sure you want to give me
that key?" Dion joked with Lastman. "A couple of weeks ago, I lost my key
at home and I locked myself about five hours outside. So you got a second
chance: are you sure you want to give me that key?"
Dion was accompanied by her husband and manager, Rene Angelil, who recently underwent successful treatment for throat cancer. As she listened to speeches praising her stellar accomplishments in the field of music, Dion beamed, often leaning adoringly on her husband's shoulder.
"It's evident the whole world loves
and cherishes as much as we your beautiful songs, Celine," said Heritage
Minister Sheila Copps, presenting Dion with the marble trophy.
"You're an inspiration to all people."
Dion is possibly the world's best-known music personality and, with more than 60 million albums sold worldwide to date, among the most successful.
The Walk of Fame, a Canadian version of the American stars-in-cement tourist attraction in Hollywood, was opened in 1998. It has been criticized as a blatant - and unimaginative - rip-off and the selection of stars has come under fire.
The celebrities themselves have praised
the attraction. David Cronenberg, who received his star this summer, said
he believes it's important that Canadians recognize their own in a conspicuous
way.
"It's these little things that sometimes
might seem corny or hokey but finally they somehow take on a patina of
significance."
The celebrities whose names are enshrined
on Canada's Walk of Fame:
1998: Bryan Adams, Pierre Berton,
Jim Carrey, Norman Jewison, Karen Kain, Gordon Lightfoot, Rich Little,
Anne Murray, Bobby Orr, Christopher Plummer, Barbara Ann Scott, Jacques
Villeneuve.
In Memorium: John Candy, Glenn Gould.
1999: Juliette Cavazzi, David Cronenberg,
Hume Cronyn, Maurice Richard, Rush (Alex Lifeson, Geddy Lee, Neil Peart),
Johnny Wayne (died 1990) and Frank Shuster, Celine Dion, Lou Jacobi, Buffy
Sainte-Marie.
In Memorium: Mary Pickford.
© The Canadian Press, 1999
=========================================
Tearful Celine goes on
Chanteuse praises hubby, thanks
fans
By JANE STEVENSON -- Toronto Sun
TORONTO -- Quebec pop diva Celine Dion's farewell-for-the-time-being tour finally arrived at the Air Canada Centre last night after being postponed in April.
And it didn't take the 31-year-old powerhouse singer very long to mention the reason for the postponement -- that her husband-manager Rene Angelil had been diagnosed with cancer.
"I'm a little bit nervous tonight," admitted Dion after a slightly tentative vocal start on her first three songs -- Let's Talk About Love, Declaration Of Love and Because You Loved Me.
"But you know if I'm here -- everything is okay."
Dion's forthright approach immediately prompted a huge round of applause from the sold-out crowd of 18,000 and brought the choked-up singer close to tears.
"The last few months -- it's been a rough, tough road -- a rocky road for Rene and I, especially for him," she continued. "He's showed so much courage, and I'm so proud of him."
The good news is that 57-year-old Angelil underwent surgery and chemotherapy and was able to make an appearance with his wife at a news conference in Montreal just last week to report he's fully recovered.
Last night, Dion had a spotlight shone on Angelil in his seat way up in the nosebleed section of the Air Canada Centre.
"Geez, you should have told me," she joked. "I have better tickets than that."
Getting serious again, Dion told the audience: "I wanted to personally say to all of you thank you so much for for your prayers and cards and positive energy -- this is the strongest medicine there is."
In Montreal last week, the couple reiterated their plans to take at least a two-year -- possibly three-year -- break from the music business to try and start a family. (Dion's performing break begins after her New Year's Eve show in Montreal.)
However, with Dion's greatest hits album coming out in November and a CBS TV special also this fall, will her fans really get the chance to miss her?
Last night, Dion's supporters seemingly couldn't get enough as she performed "in the round" on a red-lit, heart-shaped stage.
The elaborate and slickly produced show began simply with Dion rising alone out of the stage in a long, flowing white-robed dress.
But as the first song of the night, Let's Talk About Love, progressed, her nine-person band eventually rose up alongside her, while a children's choir later took the stage for the song's big ending.
Opening for Dion last night -- the first of two sold-out shows at the ACC-- was fellow Quebecer and former '80s heartthrob, Corey Hart.
Hart, a sweaty, tanned, and lithe presence who bounded around Dion's enormous stage, released a new album called Jade last fall.
But, true to form, it was his decade-old radio hits like Never Surrender and (I Wear My) Sunglasses At Night -- that latter one complete with props -- that really got the crowd going towards the end of his set.
Hart also contributed two songs to
Dion's Let's Talk About Love album.
=================================================
Well, where do we start? First,
the Quebec pop diva gave the thumbs up yesterday afternoon after her star
was unveiled on Canada's Walk of Fame outside the Royal Alexandra Theatre.
And last night, she wowed a sold-out ACC crowd with her farewell-for-now
tour. Celine choked back tears as she told fans about her husband-manager
Rene Angelil's cancer fight.
PHOTO: Greg Henkenhaf, Sun
http://www.canoe.ca/TorontoSun/home.html
http://www.canoe.ca/JamConcertsA2D/dionc_091799.html
=================================================
Celine Dion gets star on Walk of
Fame
TORONTO (CP) -- Celine Dion, already
an immortal in the world of pop music, has had her name carved in stone
-- or at least concrete.
Dion's star on the Walk of Fame was unveiled Friday, just in front of the Royal Alexandra Theatre on downtown King Street.
Apologizing for her late arrival -- due to a late flight and traffic -- Dion gracefully accepted a trophy comemmorating the event.
"I want to say thank you for waiting for me," Dion said as about 300 fans gathered for the event cheered. "I know if we have the chance to be here today it's because of all the fans.
"And I want to say a big thank you to all the fans from Quebec who were the first to support me . . . . You are with me always."
The Charlemagne, Que., pop diva joins dozens of Canadian luminaries of the entertainment, sports and arts fields -- from pianist Glenn Gould to hockey star Wayne Gretzky -- who have had stars in their honour chiselled into downtown sidewalks.
Dion also thanked Toronto Mayor Mel Lastman, who presented her with the key to the city.
"Are you sure you want to give me that key?" Dion joked with Lastman. "A couple of weeks ago, I lost my key at home and I locked myself about five hours outside. So you got a second chance: are you sure you want to give me that key?"
Dion was accompanied by her husband and manager, Rene Angelil, who recently underwent successful treatment for throat cancer. As she listened to speeches praising her stellar accomplishments in the field of music, Dion beamed, often leaning adoringly on her husband's shoulder.
"It's evident the whole world loves and cherishes as much as we your beautiful songs, Celine," said Heritage Minister Sheila Copps, presenting Dion with the marble trophy.
"You're an inspiration to all people."
Dion is possibly the world's best-known music personality and, with more than 60 million albums sold worldwide to date, among the most successful.
The Walk of Fame, a Canadian version of the American stars-in-cement tourist attraction in Hollywood, was opened in 1998. It has been criticized as a blatant -- and unimaginative -- rip-off and the selection of stars has come under fire.
The celebrities themselves have praised the attraction. David Cronenberg, who received his star this summer, said he believes it's important that Canadians recognize their own in a conspicuous way.
"It's these little things that sometimes might seem corny or hokey but finally they somehow take on a patina of significance."
http://www.canoe.ca/JamMusic/sep18_celine.html
=================================================
Celine bids adieu to Toronto fans
Pop superstar's show mixes her glamour
and homespun charm
By Betsy Powell
Toronto Star Pop Music Critic
It was goodbye Toronto, again.
And it's goodbye, again, tonight.
Celine Dion has pledged repeatedly - no less to a national television audience tuned into the Juno Awards ceremony in March - that her current world tour will be followed by an extended hiatus so she can rest and start a family with husband/manager René Angelil.
So with two sold-out Air Canada Centre
performances last night and tonight, she is presumably saying her last
adieu to Toronto. (The shows were originally scheduled for last spring
but were postponed so Dion could spend time with Angelil as he recovered
from skin-cancer surgery.)
Early on in last night's performance
the Quebec superstar thanked the crowd for all of the prayers, cards and
``positive energy'' the couple has received during the difficult past year.
``I'm here, you know, 'cause everything's
okay,'' she said, blinking back tears as the crowd of 16,000 stood and
cheered. She commended Angelil for his courage, saying ``he's here tonight,''
asking him to stand up for the spotlight way up in the stands.
But then it was down to business.
She pounded her chest. She winked. She vamped. She pranced and swung her waist-length hair extensions back and forth. She also gave the crowd every reason to marvel at her vocal power and range.
During one interlude, she didn't sing at all but danced like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. Her rendition of ``Stayin' Alive,'' sounded every bit Bee Gee. And then, in one of the weirder moments, Dion addressed the Brothers Gibb who appeared on a giant video screen to ``accompany'' the singer on their hit, ``Immortality.''
Popping up from the centre of her
heart-shaped stage wearing a satin, floor-length kimono, Dion kicked things
off with the up tempo ``Let's Talk About Love,'' surrounded by a children's
choir and backed by a five-piece band and four singers.
Slipping off her robe to reveal
a sleeveless, body-hugging pantsuit, Dion followed with some of her best
known ballads, including ``Because You Loved Me,'' ``The Reason,'' and
``Tell Him.''
Less predictably, and quite effectively, Dion opted to sit at centre stage and sing some of her own personal favourites while reining in the bombast.
Not that the crowd minded when she
turned it up. With her mix of glamour, homespun charm and slight awkwardness,
there's no denying Dion connects with her fans.
Admittedly, not everyone is swept
up by the chanteuse's appeal. Her over-the-top emoting, the saccharine
sentiment of her lyrics and overblown arrangements have never endeared
her to music critics. And certainly for a while there, the songstress was
in serious danger of overexposure as her Titanic anthem, ``My Heart Will
Go On,'' went on and on. Dressed in a pale pink ballgown and standing behind
a mock ship railing, she closed the show with it last night.
With any luck Dion's semi-retirement
will consign the syrupy tune to its own watery grave.
Dion will be missed, not just by
her fans, but by the music industry accustomed to her phenomenal sales
that have turned her into the best-selling artist on the planet.
Her last album, 1997's Let's Talk
About Love, which formed the bulk of the set-list, sold 25 million copies
worldwide.
She is a global celebrity who racks up awards and honours wherever she goes. Indeed, yesterday Dion received her star on Canada's Walk of Fame as hundreds of fans looked on. Canadian Heritage Minister Sheila Copps presented the honour in front of the Royal Alexandra Theatre on King St. while Mayor Mel Lastman handed over a ceremonial key to the city.
Dion will continue to tour until the end of the year.
http://www.thestar.com/editorial/news/990918NEW08_CI-DION18.html
Ric
Diva is a dynamo
Dion brings down the house with
over-the-top performance-Ottawa Sun-14-Sep-1999
By JOSHUA OSTROFF -
OTTAWA - Like her signature song My Heart Will Go On, Céline Dion has herself been going on, engaging in the longest good-bye since Seinfeld.
Yet each time she repeats her desire to (semi)retire and have babies with her aging husband, it remains water-cooler conversation.
Why? Because, as the crowd at the first of two sold-out Corel Centre performances will tell you, Quebec's pride and joy (even though she switched to English) is easily the most popular performer in the world. In any language. Period.
Nevertheless, her work has rung less true with music critics, unseemly cynics like me who constantly gripe over her lack of vocal subtlety, overblown orchestration and tired arrangements.
Entering the arena through a hole in her heart-shaped stage, the kimono-bedecked Dion launched into a children's choir-enhanced rendition of Let's Talk About Love, followed by a relatively rockin' French number and the saccharine ballad Because You Loved Me -- all of which did little to change my opinion.
After all, the songs are what they are.
But what is undeniable in Dion's live show is her powerful pipes, an unending well of vocal prowess emanating from her little Francophone frame, and her unmatchable way with fans.
Dion's every move, her every utterance elicited Backstreet Boys-level screams and by discussing her husband's recent bout with skin cancer and saying "thank you so very much for your prayers and your positive energy" she made the fans feel like they were an important part of her life, even though she "says" she's leaving them for a few years. It is a drastic change from the audience contempt exhibited by the fame-loathing stars of a few years past.
She addressed the bilingual crowd in both official languages, and though favouring her better-known Anglo songs, numbers like S'il suffisait d'aimer garnered huge responses, as did older songs like the rave-up Love Can Move Mountains.
Dion has also made duets with famous singers her M.O., but since she obviously can't take them on tour, she was forced to be creative. Her Barbra Streisand duet Tell Him was sung to DAT with an image of Babs on the big screen, as was a song with the Bee Gees, while her R. Kelly duet I'm Your Angel was performed with a live sound-alike.
Her finest moment came in the middle of the show, during a medley of her favourite songs. Performed to a tastefully minimalist musical backdrop, Dion reigned her voice in on songs like Tears in Heaven and sounded all the more beautiful for it.
And, of course, she ended with that damn Titanic song,
So while her performances of songs like It's All Coming Back To Me and My Heart Will Go On -- during which she donned a pretty pink dress and stood on a facsimile ship railing with a wind machine tussling her long hair -- were terribly over-the-top, they connected with the 18,000 in attendance in an equally over-the-top fashion.
And there's no way to criticize that.
Her opening act Corey Hart, who received the plum spot presumably for writing two of the songs on Dion's last album, also established a strong rapport with the audience.
Though he has established himself in recent years as a modestly successful adult contemporary artist, the former rock star has never and, dare I say, will never, regain his arena-filling rank.
Nevertheless, as his solid performance
last night attests, he is certainly no longer a punchline.
(posted by Ric)
Canada's Walk of Fame Pays Tribute to Céline Dion - 14-Sep-1999
Royal Alexandra Theatre
260 King St. W. Toronto
September 18th Saturday 4:00pm
Céline Dion
In honour of her achievements, singer Céline Dion will be inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame. Born in Charlemagne, Quebec, Dion began performing at age five and recorded her debut album in 1981. Since then she's gone on to garner a great deal of international attention, selling more than 25 million records worldwide, to date. Dion, who has also won mutliple awards at the Junos and Grammys and the World Music Awards in Europe, will be present at the unveiling of the permanent monument in her honour. A star made of buffed marble and granite with Dion's name engraved on it will be embedded in the sidewalk of Toronto's entertainment district, joining the stars of earlier inductees.
The first set of inductees had their names set along the walk in 1998. The Walk of Fame was initiated by members of Canada's entertainment industry, and then the Government of Canada, the Province of Ontario and City of Toronto got involved. A total of 21 recipients have been inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame. They include Norman Jewison, Gordon Lightfoot and Karen Kain. Criteria for nomination is that each nominee must have been born in Canada or spent their formative or creative years here, and have a minimum of 10 years experience in their field. In addition, their accomplishment must have had a national or international impact on Canada's cultural heritage.
Rene Angelil and Celine Dion publically announced that they are giving part $1 million dollars(probably small part) of the millions...to charity in Quebec..from Celine's "Millenium Concert".
To include;
- Dans la Rue (that's to help people
who live in the street)
- La Fédération des
ressources d'hébergement pour femmes violentées et en difficulté
(that's to help women victim of violence and in distress)
- Association québécoise
de la Fibrose kystique (That's Cystic Fibrosis)
- Institut de cardiologie de Montréal
(That's Montréal heart institute)
- Fondation Achille Tanguay (That's
to help poor people in need) That's Céline's Mom Foundation that
has Maman Dion's father name)
- Jeunesse Au Soleil (That's to
feed the youth who have nothing to eat)
- Fondation Farha (That's to help
people with Sida...medication..)
- La Guignolée Péladeau
(to help the poor in many different ways)
- La Fondation québécoise
du Cancer (That's a Cancer Foundation)
- La Maison Jean Lapointe (A home
which helps people who have addiction (drugs, alcohol...)
QUEBEC CITY (Reuters) - French-Canadian pop diva Celine Dion said Saturday most of the tickets for her New Year's Eve concert in Montreal, her last public performance ahead of a lengthy hiatus, had already been sold.
One of her organizers said that only 1,200 tickets out of 18,000 still remained to be sold, just four days after they went on sale.
Dion announced last Wednesday that the New Year's Eve concert at the Molson Centre will feature such guests as Canadian rocker Bryan Adams and Quebec stand-up comic Stephane Rousseau. Half of the four-hour show will feature much of the cast of the Luc Plamondon musical ``Notre Dame de Paris,'' which played to sold-out crowds in Paris and Montreal and is headed for an English-language production recording.
Dion says she wants to take several years off to start a family with her husband/manager Rene Angelil.
Reuters/Variety
16:12 09-12-99
---------------
Le Soleil /Sun(translated)-9-12-99
Steve Deschênes
On scene, the singer, as her practice, answered liberally the great declaration of love of the public.
Kathleen Lavoie
Quebec - " Finally! " seemed to say
some in the same breath of the 15,800 fans who come to attend the return
of Celine Dion to Colisée. When Celine emerged from the center stage
in the shape of heart " Cheers! " They still seemed to launch when the
24 small singers of Charlesbourg entonné with it " Let's Talk About
love". "We let us love you! " They finished with her saying their multiple
ovations. Celine was "made sing the love/sung to with love"(with applause),
yesterday, in Colisée. Nothing to see with tender consents. The
loads of love which were intended to her were honest, the nourished applause.
Electricity, it, was palpable. On scene, the singer, as her practice, answered
liberally this great declaration of love.
Energetic, gracious, with something
of serene in the glance, it distributed winks, shakings of head and small
gestures of greeting. Side spectacle, the grinding presented by Céline
for two years have not comprised much any more of secrecies for the public.
The details have some longitudinally and in broad summer exposed. And yet!
The pleasure of seeing it, very white vêtue, of interpreting with
conviction its last successes largely compensated.
Her concert, strongly composed of
parts of her last two French-speaking discs (of which I do not know, I
believe you, Ground, 'If loving you was enough' to "On En Change pas",
was included with some English songs from "Let' S Talk About Love", a medley
of her first hits and Immortality of the Bee Gees. Obviously in great form,
the singer allowed a long talk with the audience. She benefitted from it
to thank her fans for the support that they expressed to her about the
the disease of Rene.
If I am this evening here, it is because all is well. Rene, you know, I am proud of him. The last months were difficult, but it knew to show much courage and determination. If I am here, it was also to thank you and say to you for your cards and your wishes which were better than all the drugs! "It/applauds launched while seeking her husband in the audience/estrades. Earlier, before the concert has started, the onlookers were excited already in the audience. It is that nobody had been easily deceived! The lights were not yet out and several had recognized the famous black box which, pushed by technicians, transports the highly recognized singer until she was under the stage scene. Céline Dion had been uncovered! The applause of already devoted crowd was going only to be keep silent later. Much later.
DAVE SIDAWAY, GAZETTE / 'There
for Each Other': Celine Dion and Rene Angelil react to reporters' questions
at a press conference at the Molson Centre yesterday.
DAVE SIDAWAY, GAZETTE / "No plans,
no pressures" is Celine Dion's formula for interlude with Rene Angelil.
Rene Angelil appears to be winning his five-month battle with cancer.
Angelil and his wife, Celine Dion, held a press conference at a bar in the Molson Centre yesterday, their first since Angelil, 57, was found to have skin cancer on March 31.
"I feel satisfied my cancer is in remission," Angelil told reporters. "But you never know with cancer.
"Right now, I live three months at a time."
Dion, 31, who performed at a sold-out concert at the Molson Centre last night, added: "Sometimes life throws you something to make you realize what is really important. Rene's illness has brought us so much closer. We want to be there for each other.
"That doesn't mean I don't love show business - I do.
"But what energy I have inside to put into it, I want to give to him."
Angelil said recent tests show there is no longer any evidence of skin cancer.
"I feel great," he said. "We just have to wait and see. But I am very positive. Every day they discover new methods of treatment, come up with new techniques, new medicine. As far as I am concerned, the worst is over for me."
Looking thinner than usual, and speaking with a rasp, Angelil said he considers himself lucky.
"I have an extraordinary wife, I have extraordinary friends. I am a very lucky man. To take life one day at a time, for me now, that's extraordinary."
Dion, who occasionally stroked her husband's back during the one-hour press conference, said the past six months have given them both an "extraordinary maturity" that has allowed them to appreciate each other's fragility.
Family Most Important
The couple confirmed that Dion plans to retire for at least two years immediately after she performs in Las Vegas on New Year's Day.
For the next three months, however, she has a grueling schedule that includes 11 concerts that were rescheduled when Angelil fell ill.
The globe-hopping whirl resumed when Angelil's crisis passed.
He had an operation in Dallas less than 24 hours after the problem was spotted and he has been continuing to receive medical checkups to spot any recurrence.
Angelil said his brush with death put things "in another perspective. It's the family that's most important."
In addition to last night's concert at the Molson Centre, she's in Quebec City on Saturday, Ottawa Sept. 13-14, Toronto Sept. 17-18, then plays seven cities in the United States.
Also, she is launching two new CDs: Au Coeur du Stade in French on Tuesday and All the Way, an English release on Nov. 16 that includes a duet with Frank Sinatra.
It will be "her last album for a long, long time," Angelil said.
Dion said she is looking forward to semi-retirement. "We will have no plans, no pressures; I've never done that. We're going to start a child, we're going to spend time in bed with each other. I won't go into the details. It's the time in our lives to be there for each other, to talk about our feelings, about the emptiness inside.
"I will quit for at least two years definitely, maybe 21Ú2, maybe three, but definitely not less than two. After six months am I going to say, 'Oh, my God, I'm in show business, I want to go back on stage again'? I don't think so.''
Before she calls it quits, she will perform two farewell concerts, one in Montreal on Dec. 31 and the other in Las Vegas on Jan. 1.
During the press conference, Angelil announced that Bryan Adams and most of the cast of Notre-Dame de Paris, including Bruno Pelletier, Daniel Lavoie and rising Quebec singer Garou, will appear on stage with her in Montreal on New Year's Eve. He also announced he and Dion will give $1 million to 10 local charities that night, including the Quebec Cancer Society, the Farha Foundation, the Montreal Heart Institute, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, Sun Youth Organization, Le Bon Dieu Dans la Rue, the Achille Tanguay, Jean Lapointe and Peladeau charities and a federation of services to aid battered women.
Tickets on Sale
Tickets for the New Year's Eve gala at the Molson Centre go on sale this morning at 10. The tickets cost between $69 and $499.
Asked whether he is worried about the millennium bug, Angelil quipped: "We have a bigger bug than that. Right after the show in Montreal, we have to catch a plane and fly to Las Vegas."
At last night's concert, fans accepted Dion's plans for a break and wished her well.
"It's very human of her," said Raja Chehayeb of Brossard, "especially since her husband has these problems.
"He stood by her all this time. He helped expose her internationally."
Guy Bertrand of Pierrefonds agreed. "I would have done it a long time ago. She's successful. She deserves it."
"I hope she has kids," Brina Harris
said. "She works very hard. She needs a good rest."
At 31, she needs a rest.
The break will be "at least two years, maybe two and a half, maybe three, but definitely not less than two," said Dion, who emphasized it will be a full stop, with no records and no concerts.
A big part of her decision is Rene Angelil, 57, her husband-manager who recently suffered throat cancer. He has recovered fully but the experience has changed them both.
Dion and Angelil were hand-in-hand when they sat down at a news conference to talk about their plans -- or lack of plans. They stated repeatedly they want to live without any timetables.
"There are no plans, no schedules," declared Dion. "We've always planned our lives so much in advance."
Dion, who immediately cancelled all engagements when Angelil fell ill, said the two months she took off from performing "went like two weeks for me. It went by so quick."
"A lot of people come to me and say, 'What are you going to do? You're going to get bored!'
"I don't think so," Dion said.
"I have many dreams I want to realize. Hopefully, if I get pregnant, I'll be busy right there. That takes nine months right there . . . I'll be very busy, but with different things."
Right now, Dion is wrapped up in touring and in planning for her Dec. 31 Molson Centre show, a four-hour bash with fellow Canadian singers like Bryan Adams and Daniel Lavoie.
Dion and Angelil, who got married in 1994, both said they've never had enough time together. Oddly, Angelil's cancer gave the two of them a chance to relax and to appreciate each other more.
The globe-hopping whirl resumed when Angelil's crisis passed -- he had an operation in Dallas less than 24 hours after the problem was spotted and he's continuing medical checkups.
Angelil said his brush with death put things "in another perspective. It's the family that's most important."
Meanwhile, Dion plans to release a new English-language album Nov. 16 called All The Way. It will feature a duet on the title song with the late Frank Sinatra, using the same recording technology that enabled Natalie Cole to sing a duet with her long-dead father Nat King Cole.
Angelil said Sinatra's widow was approached and things fell into place right away.
"It took about 10 minutes," he said. The widow told him that Sinatra was a big admirer of Celine's work.
Angelil also said $1 million
of the profits from the New Year's Eve show will go to 10 Quebec-based
charities.
------------------
Celine to duet with Frank Sinatra
Canada's biggest musical export
- Celine Dion - is the latest to record a duet with Frank Sinatra.
A spokesperson for Sony Music Canada confirmed that Dion will duet with Sinatra on the song 'All the Way' which will appear on an album of the same name. The legendary American crooner passed away in May 1998.
The duet was recorded using the same technology that enabled Natalie Cole to duet with her deceased father Nat King Cole on 'Unforgettable'. According to a report from Canadian Press, Sinatra was a big fan of Dion's work and the project has the blessing of his widow.
'All the Way' was originally planned as a greatest hits album, but will now consist of a mix of new songs and Dion's hits. The disc is set for release November 16.
In other release news, a live Celine Dion album called 'Au coeur du stade' is set to hit stores Sep. 14. The disc was recorded at the Stade de France earlier this summer.
NEW YEAR'S EVE
Dion also announced Wednesday that she's taking off "at least two years, maybe two-and-a-half, maybe three."
Her hiatus is set to take place after a big year-end concert in Montreal on Dec. 31. Guests for the show, in which Dion is reported to be performing for over two hours, include Canadian rocker Bryan Adams and Quebec comic Stephane Rousseau.
The cast of the musical 'Notre Dame de Paris' will also perform for an additional two hours.
Dion's manager/husband Rene Angelil, currently recovering from skin cancer, confirmed that the American TV network CBS would be broadcasting a truncated 30 minute version of the show.
-- JAM! Showbiz
Uberchanteuse Céline Dion has released a new batch of tickets for both of her upcoming Corel Centre shows in Ottawa. The concerts, originally scheduled for last spring before her husband took ill, will be performed on a heart-shaped round stage on Sept. 13 and 14 and promise to include all her chart toppers. It may also be your last chance to see this Canadian icon for some time as she has pledged to retire from music after New Year's to concentrate on having children. Tickets are available at Ticketmaster and cost $49.50 and $79.50
{{{Ottawa SUN Media Group}}}
Ric
-------------------------------------------------------------
CBS Special Scheduled for November
24th 20:00 eastern...
Wednesday, 25-Aug-1999 10:05:38
132.225.5.10 writes:
CBS will pull a hat trick on the competition during the November sweep by offering musical specials featuring Céline Dion, Shania Twain and Ricky Martin on consecutive nights. After airing triple-threat promos touting the musical lineup, CBS will kick it off with a Dion special from 8-9 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 24. Her concert special will serve as a lead-in to the eye's female-friendly movie from 9-11 p.m. Twain will air from 8-9 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 25, after the eye airs the Miami Dolphins-Dallas Cowboys Thanksgiving showdown.
Ric
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Rider PGA Cup
Wednesday, 25-Aug-1999 10:14:14
132.210.182.17 writes:
Hey Everyone,
This morning I read in "J. de Mtl"
that Céline has been especially invited to be part of the Rider
PGA Cup. Apparently she's been ask to perform at their request a 20-30
minutes set of her greatest hits. It says also she will be paid $250,000
to do that...not that surprising but the funny thing here is that Tiger
Woods, David Duval, Sergio ? (sorry, don't remember his last name) will
receive $5,000 each to play THREE days...funny don't you think? But don't
get me wrong here, I don't think they need any pity cuz of that, we know
they do VERY well for themselve also but I thought it was funny...
Good day everyone!
Lou
Top Performers Join Cisco Systems and UNDP to Help End Extreme Poverty
First Global Integration of TV, the
Internet and Events for Social Change;
Long-Term Initiative to Demonstrate
the Internet's Power to Fight World's
Worst Poverty
SAN JOSE, Calif. and NEW YORK, Aug.
12 /PRNewswire/ -- Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO) and the United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP) today announced a world-class line up of entertainers
scheduled to perform in
NetAid, a long-term initiative created
by the two organizations to help end the growing problem of extreme poverty.
NetAid will bring together for the first time the power of the Internet,
the global reach of television and radio, and the energy and impact of
world-renowned artists and producers to inspire action against one of the
world's most serious problems.
Each of the artists will perform a set at one of the three overlapping NetAid concerts on October 9 at Giants Stadium in New York, Wembley Stadium in London and The Palais des Nations in Geneva. The scheduled artists include:
Celine Dion
A limited number of artists will
be added to the shows.
The concerts will be one of the most widely broadcast programs for social change in history. VH1 and MTV will broadcast the concerts in the US, and BBC television and radio will carry them in the UK. Radio Express will distribute a radio feed of the concerts worldwide, and negotiations are in progress for additional television rights around the world. The entire program also will be webcast live on two channels -- one carrying the concert, the second showing backstage scenes. Tickets will go on sale beginning on August 24 for the Wembley show, and on September 8 for the Giants Stadium concert. A total of 110,000 tickets will be available for the two shows. The Geneva concert is by invitation only.
"NetAid is a new Internet model for social change that will combine cutting-edge technology with the world's best artistic talent and poverty-fighting expertise," said Don Listwin, executive vice president of Cisco Systems. "Just as the Internet has revolutionized business, the Internet can help lift the hopes of communities in need by bringing ideas, people and resources together in ways never thought possible. NetAid will use the largest scale Internet technology ever deployed to tackle one of the world's largest problems."
The technology employed by NetAid is unique in scale and integration. It includes one of the world's most powerful web sites, http://www.netaid.org ,that will launch September 8, creating opportunities for people to learn,contribute time and money, exchange ideas and expertise, and join with those leading the fight against extreme poverty. The site, which will continue indefinitely after the concerts, will have capacity to handle 125,000 simultaneous live streams, about 10 times the scale of any other streaming site, and 60 million hits per hour -- 10 times the peak of the last Olympics and 1998 Men's World Cup.
To manage this traffic, NetAid will
employ a distributed network of more than 1,500 servers in over 90 locations
worldwide. KPMG, a leading Internet integrator, is building
the web site. Akamai Technologies is serving the site content using
its Internet content delivery system. Both companies are sponsors
of NetAid and are donating enormous amounts of time and technology.
Real Networks is supporting the
webcast.
The integration of the webcast, web site, television and radio will give audiences unprecedented flexibility, enabling them to enjoy the same program through different media, access a rich diversity of information, and choose their own means to fight extreme poverty. At the same time, the integration will create unique synergies to enhance NetAid's effectiveness. For instance, people watching on TV or via webcast will be prompted by artists and film packages to click online to learn more about certain efforts to address poverty, take action or join with leading UN agencies and non-governmental organizations.
Mark Malloch Brown, Administrator for UNDP said, "Unfortunately, extreme poverty is on the rise. The existing tools and resources to combat the world's worst poverty are clearly insufficient. NetAid will be a lasting weapon that will help mobilize people that were not involved previously, and create new virtual communities that will work together to eradicate extreme poverty."
Cisco is underwriting the cost of NetAid, managing with UNDP the overall program, and leading the development and coordination of its technology and marketing. Goldberg, Moser, O'Neill is working on a pro bono public service campaign for print media, and Miller Huber Relationship Marketing is donating services for an online marketing program.
UNDP is developing content for the web site, drawing on its global network, partner UN agencies and non-governmental organizations. UNDP will be responsible for the management of the web site following the concerts.
The team of producers responsible for NetAid's entertainment have led many of the world's largest philanthropic efforts such as Live Aid, We Are the World and Hands Across America. They include David Goldberg, Harvey Goldsmith, Ken Kragen, Don Mischer and Jeff Pollack. The shows will begin at 5pm EDT in New York, 5pm local time in London and 10 pm local time in Geneva.
In addition to the live performances, many of the artists involved with NetAid also will contribute to short documentary packages about successful anti-poverty programs. Academy Award-winning producer, June Beallor, is producing the documentaries. These packages will help educate the NetAid audience about extreme poverty and also drive traffic to the web site.
NetAid leaders are establishing The NetAid Foundation to disburse the net proceeds from the initiative on an ongoing basis to fight extreme poverty worldwide. Proceeds from the October 9 concerts will be disbursed to help two specific populations living in extreme poverty: the refugees of Kosovo and African countries.
More than one billion people around the world live in extreme poverty, on less than the equivalent of one dollar per day. NetAid will help channel support and activism to address several key issues that are major causes of extreme poverty, including: basic needs such as food and shelter, helping refugees and other displaced victims of war and disasters, securing human rights, preserving the quality of the environment and natural resources and relieving debts of poor nations.
Cisco Systems, Inc. is the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet.
Through a unique network of 134 country
offices, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) helps people in
174 countries and territories to help themselves, focusing on poverty elimination,
environmental regeneration, job creation and the advancement of women.
In support of these goals, UNDP is frequently asked to assist in promoting
sound governance and market
development and to support rebuilding
societies in the aftermath of war and humanitarian emergencies. For
additional information visit www.undp.org/dpa/index.html.
For more information please log on to http://www.cisco.com/netaid . For more detailed information on the technology for NetAid, please refer to the separate technology press release available on the aforementioned web site.
SOURCE Cisco Systems, Inc.
08/12/99 12:42 EDT http://www.prnewswire.com
Singer Celine Dion is golfer's biggest fan at charity benefit
By ROBERT MACY
Associated Press Writer
LAS VEGAS (AP) -- More than 1,000 fans turned out to help golf star Tiger Woods raise money for his foundation benefiting underprivileged young people. One of his biggest fans -- singer Celine Dion -- shared the spotlight.
``He's not only the No. 1 golfer, he's the No. 1 human being,'' Dion said of Woods during her 30-minute performance at Tiger Jam II.
The annual event raises money for the California-based Tiger Woods Foundation, Inc.
Dion's voice broke with emotion as she recounted her husband-manager, ReneAngelil, being diagnosed with cancer four months ago. Angelil had a skin cancer removed from his neck and is undergoing radiation therapy.
Dion said she and her husband are big Tiger Woods fans, so a message he left on their answering machine came as a surprise.
``You should have seen Rene's face,'' she recalled of the message. She said Woods called three times in the next three weeks to inquire about Angelil's progress and boost his morale.
``You lifted his spirit up so much,'' Dion told Woods.
The foundation has raised some $4 million, according to Woods' father, Earl Woods, who heads the organization.
Saturday night's event included an auction of a dozen items that raised $242,500. Fetching the most money was a round of golf with Woods at his home course in Orlando, Fla. that went for $65,000. A limited edition Jeep Cherokee drew $44,000 and a guitar autographed by the Eagles rock group brought $31,000.
The Rio Suite Hotel and Casino, host of the event, presented a check for $100,000.
Woods said the foundation gives disadvantaged youngsters a chance to play golf, with him teaching many of the clinics.
Woods said that while teaching disadvantaged kids the game of golf, he was pitching another more important lesson -- ``that they can make something of themselves.''
``We're not about golf, we're about humanitarianism,'' Woods said.
Money raised from this year's Tiger Jam will provide funds for seven youth charities in California, Nevada and Michigan.
Sun Aug 8 1999
by Frederic Perron
She beats her own records in Europe. According to Pollstar, Céline Dion would be, this week, the oe who has the largest incomes for the sale of tickets of spectacles. It should be said that Céline attracts crowd: 180,000 people saw her in two evenings at the Stade de France, close to Paris. Moreover, she filled Wembley Stadium in London with 122,000 spectactors and she sang in front of 75,000 people in Brussels. These figures come from the magazine, which does not specify the amount of the incomes.
Always according to this specialty
magazine, Céline would have beaten her records of sales for each
city where she went. She should restart her North American leg in September
to give concerts which she had had to postpone to remain with her husband,
René Angelil who was sick.
(posted by Ric)
Céline Dion takes a little
rest
TORONTO (CP) - Céline Dion,
who has just finished a several concerts in Europe, intends to take leave
for the remainder of the summer. She will take to the road again in September
to give concerts which had been cancelled in the United States and Canada.
In Paris, Céline offered her performance in front of 180 thousand
people; in Brussels in front of 75 thousand people; and in London in front
of 122 thousand spectators.
CBS To Tune Up Specials From Martin, Dion, Twain -7-27-99
Ricky Martin
By Josef Adalian
PASADENA (Variety) - Ricky Martin will move his hips for CBS later this year in his first entertainment special for a broadcast network.
CBS landed the ``Livin' La Vida Loca'' crooner after intense lobbying from at least one other network, insiders said. CBS ended up shelling out just over $1 million for rights to the special, a significant increase over the usual rights fees for such programs.
The hourlong concert special will likely tape at a Gotham venue this fall for probable broadcast during the November sweeps. CBS also announced Sunday plans for new concert specials featuring Celine Dion and Shania Twain, who both headlined successful hours for CBS last season.
Martin's hour promises to be the biggest ratings grabber of the three, however, particularly with young female audiences that CBS usually has trouble attracting. Appearances by the singer on NBC's ``Today'' and ``Saturday Night Live'' in the spring sent ratings for those shows soaring.
CBS began talking to Martin's representatives at CAA and Sony shortly after the singer's electrifying performance at February's Grammy Awards. Talks intensified after Martin's self-titled English-language album, which has now sold more than 4 million copies, zoomed to the top of SoundScan's sales charts in late spring.
The Martin special will be the highlight of a music-packed fourth quarter for CBS:
- Dion's new hour, likely to air on Thanksgiving night, will be culled from her October concert at Radio City Music Hall, which is scheduled to be the first single-artist concert at the newly remodeled facility. the special is expected to be linked to a Dion greatest hits CD likely to be released in the fourth quarter.
- Details of Twain's latest special for CBS are still being hammered out, though CBS executives hope to tape the hour in early fall. The pop-country crooner's current release, ``Come on Over,'' has sold more than 11 million copies on the strength of singles such as ``You're Still the One'' and ``That Don't Impress Me Much.''
- CBS has also set ``Shake, Rattle & Roll,'' a four-hour miniseries on the early days of rock, for November sweeps, tied to a compilation CD of music from and inspired by the production.
CBS executives are talking to VH1
about repurposing deals for the miniseries and the concert specials, insiders
say. In exchange for heavy promotion of the programs on VH1 before their
CBS debut, VH1 would get the right to repeat the programs soon after their
debut on CBS. A similar deal between the two networks worked well for both
sides last season.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
xxx
Canada's two superstar divas, Celine Dion and Shania Twain, go head-to-head in a battle for Britain's wallets. Who is the heavyweight champion of mainstream pop?
By Sam Taylor
Celine Dion Sheffield Don Valley
Stadium
Shania Twain Wembley Arena
What did we ever do to Canada? A bit of harmless colonisation, some casual exploitation. Surely not enough to justify the simultaneous invasion, in one week, of Celine Dion, Shania Twain and Alanis Morissette? The charismaless chunk at the top of North America lay, until recently, at 84th in the world pop rankings. Yet suddenly it has surged to the summit with a trio of one-time child stars turned globally famous pop divas.
Morissette's grunge-lite bubble may already have burst her second album, the unlistenable Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie, has flopped alarmingly but in Celine and Shania, Canada boasts two of the five biggest-selling female artists of the decade: the undisputed champion and the hot new challenger in the brutal, cut-throat world of heavyweight MOR singing.
And so to the match-up. In the beige corner, with a voice that can melt the paint on passing cars, selling a CD every 1.2 seconds, the titanic talent of the uuuunsiiiiiinkable . . . Celine Dion! And in the rhinestone corner, the woman with the most exposed midriff in country music history, her name is Ojibway Indian for 'I'm On My Way', the ball-busting, sensaaaational . . . Shania Twain! Seconds out, round one. . . What a contrast in styles. Celine, a tragic princess, all brave smiles and pouting intimacy, looks frail in her silver bodice and white jumpsuit. She moves as if she has been programmed by a computer perfectly choreographed and utterly sexless. Shania, her taut muscularity emphasised by a black leotard top and shiny, skintight black rubber trousers, has the earthy grace of an aerobics instructor. Were this a fist-fight, Twain would waste her opponent in seconds.
But concerts of this size are more like wars, and Celine has a bigger army and a bigger field of combat: a 150-strong entourage and a sports stadium seating 20,000. Shania's band are fewer in number but all heavily muscled, her crowd half the size of Celine's and maybe five years younger. Apart from a smattering of cowgirls in London, though, the two sets of fans are basically indistinguishable.
In the early skirmishes, Dion causes a surprise by calling up auxiliary troops: the obligatory local school choir surround her in a cute circle for the first song, 'Let's Talk About Love', setting the tone for a night of overwhelming schmaltz. Twain (who waits a more dignified 14 songs to bring on the kids' choir) opens up stridently, with the hen-night special, 'Man! I Feel Like A Woman!' and the sexual role-reversal anthem, 'Honey I'm Home'. The explosive rock dynamics are punctuated by indoor fireworks and pelvic thrusts.
The bell rings and the girls retreat
to their corners. But where are their trainers? Celine's white-haired husband,
Rene, sadly cannot be with us tonight as he is being treated for cancer,
but his wife has kindly installed a live video link-up to his home in Florida
so he can watch her deliver a nine-minute eulogy to his wonderfulness.
(Besides, Rene has already done more than enough to help his beloved. Not
only did he become her manager when she was 12 years old, but he later
sent her off for an 18-month makeover which altered her teeth, her hair,
her eyebrows and her accent. Now he loves her just the way she is. What
a guy.) Shania's hubbie, 'Mutt' Lange, the rock producer famous for his
high-bombast work with Def Leppard and AC/DC, is silent and invisible during
the concert.
Shania never mentions him once,
and only one song seems directly dedicated to him: the jealousy-baiting
'Don't Be Stupid (You Know I Love You)'. Twain is the straight-talking
type.
Dion, by contrast, is a compulsively slushy monogamaniac. There is something slightly creepy and depressing about her take on romantic relationships: no sex, no humour, no fights . . . just an unwavering, helpless devotion. Every Celine Dion song is aimed at Simon Bates's 'Our Tune' radio slot. You could slow dance, snog and cry to them all, but most of the audience look like their snogging days are over. For half an hour, Dion's punches seem to be losing their power.
Meanwhile, Twain, who is a natural at the power-pop numbers, sounds a bit brusque in the ballads. She sits cross-legged on a tall, white stool for 'You're Still The One' and 'You've Got A Way', her shit-eating grin rather detracting from the tone of lustrous sentimentality. Pretty soon she's back on her feet, grinding her hips to the thud-thud-clap of 'Any Man of Mine', a rhythm reminiscent of Queen's 'We Will Rock You' and, perhaps less coincidentally, Def Leppard's 'Pour Some Sugar On Me'. Unsurprisingly, it rocks.
Suddenly, Celine delivers an uppercut. Her new single, 'Treat Her Like A Lady', features three things previously unheard of in Dion songs: a beat, a lyric that appears to criticise men, and gasp a black rapper (Diana King) who flashes on to the giant video screen and causes a mass frown. Mercifully, this strange apparition is soon replaced by the reassuring image of Barbra Streisand the Celine Dion of her time who duets with the Canadian on 'Tell Him'.
The only thing flashed up on Shania's video screens, apart from close-ups of her face and butt, is the word 'YEAH!', scrawled in bright red.
They both sneak off for a costume
change. Shania reappears in a leopardskin tank-top and flares, her legendary
midriff finally bared.
Celine wears a silver trouser-suit,
and executes a rigorously accurate John Travolta impression on the heart-shaped
stage dancefloor as she sings 'Stayin' Alive'. The Bee Gees appear on the
video screen to ask her how the show is going. She smiles up at them with
gleaming insincerity and thanks them for the `marvellous gift' of their
song 'Immortality'.
Perhaps sensing defeat, Shania goes in for the kill, belly-dancing to her British breakthrough hit, 'That Don't Impress Me Much', setting off more fireworks, disappearing into a flaming bass drum, then being paraded through the crowd on a wooden tray held aloft by bouncers. People wave and yell.
It's a brave attempt, but the contest is over within seconds. Dressed in a fluffy pink ballgown, Dion drops her nuclear warhead 'My Heart Will Go On', the theme from Titanic. Just in case you'd forgotten this fact, the video screen features scenes of the ship sinking, and Celine performs the song standing at a ship's prow. People cry and throw money.
Twain's sassy energy is ultimately drowned out by Dion's gigantic vat of maple syrup. There is simply no way you can compete with the lowest common denominator. Princess Celine exits the stadium like real royalty, touching the outstretched hands and mouthing 'I love you' at the mass. The mass loves her back.
CELINE DION
Age: 31
From: Charlemagne, Quebec
Vital statistics: 5ft7in, 115lbs, 100 million career album sales
Married to: Her manager, Rene Angelil, 57
Background: Youngest of 14 children, father a butcher
Early CV: Sang aged five at her brother's
wedding; released record at 13;
won Eurovision (for Switzerland)
aged 20
Value for money: pounds 50 for 14 songs
Owes her success to: Hard work, Titanic
SHANIA TWAIN
Age: 33
From: Windsor, Ontario
Vital statistics: 5ft3in, 105lbs, 20 million career album sales
Married to: Her producer, `Mutt' Lange, 46
Background: Second of five children, father a lumberjack
Early CV: Sang in clubs aged eight;
sang in a holiday theme park at 21
in order to feed her siblings after
death of parents
Value for money: pounds 20 for 19 songs
Owes her success to: Hard work, nice navel
(Thanks for the article Mike)
Pop up too close and personal: Celine Dion Don Valley Stadium, Sheffield - Dave Simpson
Three songs in, a smiling Celine
Dion decides she wants to talk to us,
'personally'. 'I just want to let
you know,' she begins, 'Rene is doing
fine' For anyone not in the know
(and there are 50,000 frantic clappers at
Sheffield who are,) Rene is Rene
Angelil, Dion's 57 year old
husband-manager, back home in Florida
recovering from cancer. Celine - in
a tight, glittering number - explains
how she wanted to be with him but
also wished to be here in Sheffield
to 'share in our positive energies'.
(At 50 Pounds a head, that's a lot
of positive energy). What's more, as
she explains, Rene is watching the
gig - as he does every Dion gig - on
the TV at their luxurious home.
How lovely! By saying this, Dion (who is
often accused of not putting her
character into her music) defies her
critics and defines the concert.
Previously schmaltzy big-voiced power
ballads take on new, weightier meanings.
There's one called Immortality;
another Love Can Move Mountains.
She even covers (gasp) Stayin' Alive.
This isn't just a pop concert but
a gigantic, surreal respiratory machine.
From anyone else, such an exhibition
of private grief would be Hollywood
posturing of the most lurid, but
Dion is as scarily sincere as her
marketing managers no doubt like
her songs to sound. Like Michael Jackson,
she's spent a life on stage, ascending
from family poverty to a
$100 million fortune. She had no
boyfriends other than Angelil (who
masterminded her ascent) they remain
childless, and on stage she, like
Jackson, seems trapped in a stilted
bubble.
Dion talks to her audience the way
a regular person would confide in a
close friend. 'In every business,
there's a price to pay.' Pause, guilt.
'But I'm very lucky.' She reacts
to the bubble-prick of Rene's illness the
only way she knows how - in emotional
cliches, and before an audience.
Her show is big on regimented precision
and strangely eerie. There are
autocues, levitating stages and
telescreen virtual duets with Barbara
Streisand and the Bee Gees. ('How's
the show going?' asks a video Gibb,
every night). There's a mass rush
for the toilets during the French-sung
numbers (will Rene, back in Florida,
nip to the lavvie too?). But weirdest
of all is the seemingly painless
way Dion instantly switches into party
mode for the closing numbers.
Finally, following the inevitable
Titanic-sized My Heart Will Go On,
accompanied by images from the film,
she leaves the stage to flowers. As
she does so, her face momentarily
drops. Celine Dion has notched up a
hundred million record sales, but
somehow, I don't envy her one of them.
Daily Mirror -July 7th 1999 - Soul diva Celine is queen - Polly Graham
CELINE Dion has always been an emotional singer - but last night the diva put more of her soul than ever into her performance.
It's no surprise that her love ballads seem more heartfelt than ever as she kicked off the UK leg of her tour.
After all, she has been through a
hell of a lot in the past three months.
The star went from the high of her
Titanic hit My Heart Will Go On to the low of her husband and manager Rene
Angelil's battle with skin cancer.
She opened her show before a 50,000-strong
crowd at Sheffield's Don Valley Stadium with the anthemic Let's Talk About
Love.
The tone changed for the second
number, Declaration of Love, as she raunchily ripped off her coat to reveal
a sexy sequinned white catsuit.
Then she moved on to a hit ballad
Because You Loved Me.
Throughout the show she easily switched
from powerful ballads to showtunes with flirty dance routines thrown in.
There were acoustic numbers too,
such as the Bee Gees medley which showed off her awe-inspiring range of
vocals.
Throughout it all, Celine showed
her ability to make a crowd feel like they are having an intimate experience.
This could be the last opportunity
for Celine's British fans to see her for the next couple of years. So don't
risk missing out on her for so long.
Tickets for a Celine Dion concert go for a painful fifty quid each - sixty for the London shows. At that price, you would expect at least a UFO landing with a bunch of spindly greys emerging to form the chorus for the last encore.
As it is, Dion emerges a diminutive vision in flowing white and simply does what she does best. That is, she sings pitch-perfect, one hundred per cent technically accurate songs penned by other people.
A full stadium, having paid their money and taken their choice, greet her ecstatically, fuelled by over-priced beer and a stunning night sky with a beautiful sunset. She is, as she tells them, "very lucky".
The tour is called Let's Talk About Love, but should have been renamed Let's Talk Around It A Bit, which would have summed up the nature of the kind of song she sings. This is a huge criticism, considering Dion has one ofthe most powerfully emotive voices around.
She is also very talky, and thanks us all for our prayers and good positive energy concerning her husband Rene's illness; other than that, her manner is as melodramatic as the songs and her three costume changes.
Our focus is directed mostly at the screens, for a split-screen duet with Barbra Streisand and to introduce to us her friends the Bee Gees, before she launches into the hit singles The Power of Love and Think Twice, the final costume change and a series of songs.
The crowd roar as the first aerial shot of the Titanic appears on screen to My Heart Will Go On. Personally, I am on the edge of my seat. It takes at least half an hour to get out of here, apparently.
29 Treat Her Like A Lady
Celine Dion
Not the famous Temptations song of
the same name but instead the fifth hit single from Celine Dion's Let's
Talk About Love album, released to nicely coincide with her arrival in
this country for a series of arena dates, the healthy of hubby Rene permitting
of course. To those unfamiliar with the album this single is nothing less
than a pleasant surprise as the world's favourite French-Canadian lets
her hair and gets into a reggae groove with this track written in collaboration
with Diana King who also makes a guest appearance on backing vocals. Had
this been one of the first tracks to be lifted as a single it
would of course have been massive
but with half the country and his dog already owning a copy of the album
its potential was bound to be diminished.
As it turns out Treat Her Like A
Lady becomes one of her smallest singles for a long long time. Indeed her
last single to chart outside the Top 15 was her last uptemo single Misled
which could only make Number 40 first time around in April 1994, but even
that relative flop hit Number 15 when re-released in December 1995
FRANCE 2, 20. 55 A never-before-seen First-Time Event this evening
Drucker : "Tapis Rouge" for la Fête de la musique
INCREDIBLE but true: up until now, Michel Drucker had never presented an evening broadcast during la Fête de la musique. "It's a chance," he ensures. In any case, it will happen this evening on France 2 from 20. 55. Retransmitted simultaneously on RTL 2, "Tapis Rouge" will be live and last approximately three hours.
Quebec with honours
Like all "Tapis Rouge" programmes, the broadcast will be a set of themes. "We're privileged to have québécois artists here to mark the end of Printemps du Québec, underscores Michel Drucker. Luc Plamondon (Note: "the Legend of Jimmy ", "Starmania ", and "Notre-Dame de Paris") will be the focus of honour." On the whole, the programme is solid and demonstrates a large variety. In particular, Roch Voisine, Patrick Fiori, Robert Charlebois, Diane Dufresne, Diane Tell, Isabelle Boulay, impressionist André-Philippe Gagnon, Gibert Bécaud, David Hallyday, Larusso, Lâam, Julie Zenatti, Louise Forestier, Zaccharie Richard and Claude Dubois will be there. Céline Dion, Lara Fabian, Daniel Lavoie and Garou will be there by prior recordings and not live. In one season, Drucker will have presented eleven evening shows in all including two live ones ("Victoires de la musique" the first time) and nine "Tapis Rouge" programmes, five more than last year. A sign of success not to be mislead by running times...
(web posted by Ric)
So does what Michèle LaFerrière
make sense?
Was the picture of current Québec
music really that much out-of-focus on TR?
========Translation============================A "Tapis Rouge " for the dimensions of listening by Michele LaFerrière PARIS -- So did yesterday's Tapis Rouge go as Robert Lepage planned for his Printemps du Québec en France? Let's answer it, using another question. Where were the likes of les Colocs, Leloup, Rivard, Dubmatique, Kevin Parent, Dan Bigras, Séguin, Dufault, Lemay in these songs drawn from the subsoils of francophone repertory-nostalgia? Yesterday evening's Tapis Rouge, obviously, wanted to be a homage to Luc Plamondon, through his hits of Starmania and Notre-Dame de Paris ; in the likes of Céline Dion, who we saw on video and the same song also sung by Laam; and in Roch Voisine, that the French adore, no matter what he says or sings. Rightly so and not to put a shadow on associate producer Guy Latraverse, let's start with the pleasant moments of this season's last Tapis Rouge. Julie Snyder, with her sharp wit and delinquent attitude, really livened up this variety programme. Diane Dufresne showed what she had deep in her with a version of Oxygen not as blowing as formerly, but belonging to the anthology of her old interpretations. Sylvain Cossette began again with brilliance Le temps des cathédrales, with an intensity equivalent to that of friend Bruno. Travailler c'est trop dur, Quand les hommes vivront d'amour, Je reviendrai à Montréal also got us starting to shiver. But how did David Hallyday, Laam and Larusso ever make the grade to be included in the broadcast, each sharing the blame for troublesome indifference? And Gilbert Bécaud, to stimulate change, we'd pass him by again "I often come to Québec. I made the reopening of Capitole recently," he entrusted. Time passes quickly, eh Mr. Bécaud! But for the dimensions of listening, the gentleman must still have the dimension. Because the cur of this show, he was that! It was necessary for France 2 to pull in the broadest possible audience as Paris was throbbing with 300 spectacles in the open air with its Fête de la musique. The receipt is simple: one invites Charlebois, Andre-Philippe Gagnon (disappointing with his French imitations!), some headliners from Notre-Dame de Paris, an Isabelle Boulay more "hot" that ever in France, a Diane Tell bush pilot. And one brings out the old stock of our common double sack: Et maintenant, Si j'étais un homme, Lindberg, D'amour et d'amitié. Each one hitting home with the organizer by sweetening the show.It was all candy, of course! But is this really how they perceive us, the French? Is this the image which one wants to give them about us? This last question, in fact, is pointless, because they do not have anything of it to make our image. They worry much more about the audiometer. And within the Printemps du Québec en France? Our ally Michel Drucker did not multiply the references to this event, however they justified this broadcast. It's more "paying" for France 2 to see him jest with mom, dad and brother Dion. Finally, we saw quite good television, yesterday evening. But France 2 will not "pavoisera" before having in hand its dimensions of listening. (translation by Ric-posted to web)
By HELENE HAZÉRA Monday June 21, 1999
Most astonishing is that this factory of the heart does not exclude magical moments. When the lighters ignite by the stage when twilight falls, it's like a scene from science fiction.
AFP Celine Dion, the singer of 100 million albums sold world-wide, Saturday at Saint-Denis. In March 1995, Céline Dion declared in Libération, at the time of the release of her first album with Jean-Jacques Goldman: " If there is a place where I dreamed that it goes, it's to Quebec, to England, in the United States, and here that does not go." The young artist took the lead in American market, but her French sales stagnated.
162,000 tickets.
Four years later, last Saturday and Sunday, Céline Dion has gained, offering us the Stade de France. Her French Operations announced more than 162,000 tickets were sold. Which other French-speaking diva can offer that?
The scene is in the medium of a stage, a heart under a capped quadrilateral of a dome. She arrives decked out in an embroidered white kimono of flowers, like Princess Leila from Star Wars. After starting in English: Let's Talk About Love, She betrays in a "Good evening, Paris" the syndrome of the provincial-made singer. A multicoloured children's choral group gathered around her, she takes off her kimono to show herself in white combination-trousers.
The tiny silhouette is well-behaved but, on the giant screens, the smile is carnivorous. Sometimes, wiring for sound, the orchestration or the abused English pseudo-accent scrambles the text. "That pleases me so much to see you. It's extraordinary! It's an extraordinary stage! If you were here last year, I understand that you won!" (ovation); "I'd like to say to you... that René is well." (ovation); "Sure it's difficult to be so far from him, thank you for your prayers and your energy which help so very much. This wave of love is felt as far away as Florida; this evening, he sees the show, he's with you." One expects to see "René," the husband, on the screen, and then not.
Arabesque
Since 1995, Céline Dion, always a little awkward in her younger years, gained in grace, and her gestures in fluidity. Vocally, the phenomenon endures. These acute like small bells of glass, these low registers but raucous, the passage from one register to another in flexibility. That of variety in this worked but uncultivated voice! As well incredible notes which wake up unknown things in you as almost unbearable afféteries, plated vibratile arabesques a little everywhere; which says that French is the language of love would owe Oum Kalsoum another listen.
Success. Céline Dion represents such heights that she no longer has rights to take risks. Her recital is composed of "success" more than of songs. A little English? You Are The Reason, Love Can Be So Cool (in duet-video with Barbra Streisand, her idol), Back Into The Arms of Love, Touch Me Once Again: machines with a little interchangeable successes. Almost like those written in French by the effective Jean-Jacques Goldman, who will go up on stage to sing with her.
Most astonishing is that this factory of the heart does not exclude magical moments. When the lighters ignite by the stage when twilight falls, it's like a scene from science fiction. Like a meditation of a crowd around a white ant, which emanates softness and peace. The stage sings in chorus: S'il suffisait d'aimer.
(translated by-Ric-posted on the web)
... from JdeM Sunday 99-06-20 (w/
translation)
Date: 99-06-20 20:11:38 EDT
Céline Dion s'apprête
à donner le plus gros spectacle d'un Québécois en
France
MICHEL DOLBEC(below)
=======================================================
ELLE TRIOMPHE À PARIS DEVANT
90 000 SPECTATEURS
Céline a chanté comme
si c'était la dernière fois
Le stade, effrayant de prime abord,
est devenu tout petit. Elle en a fait sa
maison
<<...>>
Manon Guilbert
<<...>>
PARIS - Hier soir, René Angelil
n'a manqué aucune seconde du spectacle que
Céline Dion offrait au Stade
de France devant 90 000 personnes. Chez lui,
dans son salon, en Floride, a expliqué
Céline avec beaucoup d'émotion, il
assistait à ce gigantesque
spectacle.
<<...>>
================================================
CÉLINE DION a partagé
ses émotions avec 90 000 personnes réunies dans le
stade de France.
Céline a chanté comme
si c'était la dernière fois Le stade, effrayant
de
prime abord, est devenu tout petit.
Elle en a fait sa maison
The Journal of Montreal
Manon Guilbert
<<...>>
PARIS - Hier soir, René Angelil
n'a manqué aucune seconde du spectacle que
Céline Dion offrait au Stade
de France devant 90 000 personnes. Chez lui,
dans son salon, en Floride, a expliqué
Céline avec beaucoup d'émotion, il
assistait à ce gigantesque
spectacle. « De chez nous, dans son fauteuil,
René voit tout, il est avec
nous grâce à la technologie. René va bien, nous
a-t-elle affirmé, malgré
que ce soit difficile. Je suis fière de lui, il est
très fort. Merci pour vos
prières et votre énergie. Ça a beaucoup aidé
! »
Les Français installés
dans les gradins et au parterre du Stade, le plus
gros qu'elle ait visité jusqu'à
maintenant, ont levé des pancartes
manifestant leur sympathie pour
René. Plusieurs, croqués à leur insu par les
caméras balayant la salle,
essuyaient leurs larmes. Comme investie d'une
mission, Céline Dion s'est
appropriée toute cette émotion pour se donner
sans compter. Chacune de ses chansons,
toutes et chacune disant l'amour, a
pris une profondeur différente,
un sens nouveau.
Plus francophone Céline
Dion, pour le public français, a transformé son
spectacle. Elle puise davantage
dans son répertoire francophone
qu'anglophone. Jean-Jacques
Goldman, vieux complice et auteur de ses deux
derniers albums français,
au grand plaisir du public, l'a rejointe sur
scène. L'effet surprise est
instantané. Sa guitare en bandoulière, il chante
avec elle J'irai où tu iras
avant d'entonner, a cappella, S'il suffisait
d'aimer. Le public chante
avec lui, le feu des briquets éclaire l'anneau du
Stade. Le moment est magique. Goldman
économise les mots, et le regard qu'il
jette sur Céline en dit long.
L'émotion est palpable et rejaillit sur le
public. Généreuse,
n'oubliant jamais ses débuts, elle se consacre à en
raconter les faits déterminants.
Elle remercie sa mère, Eddie Marney et Luc
Plamondon, présents dans
la salle, en reprenant leurs chansons, des succès
comme Ce n'était qu'un rêve,
D'amour ou d'amitié, Ziggy, L'Amour existe
encore qui, tour à tour,
l'ont propulsée au faîte de sa gloire. L'amour
Du
début à la fin, pendant
deux heures, Céline Dion accompagne chacune des 95
000 personnes réunies dans
cet immense stade. Si elle chante tous ses
succès anglophones tels que
The Power of Love, Tell Him, Let's Talk About
Love, You Are the Reason, elle dira
tout de même que la plus belle langue
pour chanter l'amour, c'est le français
avant d'interpréter Si tu m'aimes
encore. Vêtue comme
une princesse, installée au bastingage qui se dresse
sur la scène en forme de
coeur, elle nous quitte sur My Heart Will Go On.
Le Stade, effrayant de prime abord,
est devenu tout petit ! Elle en a fait
sa maison.
<<...>>
Copyright © 1999 Le Journal
de Montréal. Tous droits réservés.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Céline Dion is on the point
of giving the largest spectacle of any Québécois
in France BY MICHEL DOLBEC PARIS
(PC) - " Rene is well! " While hearing
these three words from the
mouth of Céline Dion Saturday evening, the
public at the Stade de France jumped
to their feet giving the husband of the
star a tremendous ovation. A large
wave of emotion then broke out on the
great stage, which saw it all before
at the time of the victory of France
for the World Cup of Soccer, one
year ago... On the four giant screens laid
out above the stage in the form
of a heart installed at the center of the
playing field there appeared the
faces of fans in tears, while in crowd,
fans held up signs: "Rene Courage!
You are loved," " We are with you, Rene!"
"Céline and Rene, you are
loved!"
"Sure it's difficult. But I
am so proud of him, he is so strong, continued
the singer. It is difficult
for me also to be here this evening, to be far
away, to have left our home.
Thank you for your prayers, your energy,
which help so very much."
René Angelil could see and hear on line at his
place this testimony of affection
from the French public. He indeed
followed the concert (like the two
previous in Amsterdam and Brussels)
thanks to a private direct satellite
connection.
"This wave of love, it is being felt
as far away as Florida, where he's now
sitting in comfort in his sofa,"
revealed Céline Dion, causing a new
ovation. Then addressing her
husband directly: "My love, I love you, we
love you, we are with you!"
In his entourage, one announced Saturday
evening that René Angelil
has reacted better and better to the treatments
and that he has started again talking
shop with his collaborators. He will
find his wife back with him Monday
night: Céline Dion will be jumping in a
jet at of the end of her second
concert at the Stade de France, this
evening.
The Concert
Saturday evening, everyone thus
had already known about the troubles of
health of Rene Angelil, on whom
the French media discussed extensively these
last few days. The cancer of her
husband has not affected the performance of
Céline Dion, who had never
given concert in such a great stage. With its
500,000 tons of concrete, the Stade
de France, poised like a flying saucer
to the accesses of Paris, makes
ten million times the weight of the
singer... Nearly 85,000 people took
their seats Saturday evening. They will
also be as numerous this evening.
Even before the Québécoise starts her
first song (Let's talk about love,
surrounded by a chorus of children),
part of the public had already risen.
The star, draped in white, then
appeared on a platform coming up
from beneath the immense stage. During the
show, Céline Dion performed
again some of her great American successes, of
which My heart will go is one, standing
at the prow of a ship. But she
especially interpreted the songs
written for her by Jean-Jacques Goldman,
including one with him in a duet.
After having embraced her, discrete
Goldman paid homage to the Québécoise.
"We are happy that you could come,"
he said, before starting for her,
as capella and accompanied by the public,
the refrain from S'il suffisait
d'aimer. Céline Dion then sang it in
entirety. A crescent of the
moon lit a cloudless sky then. The public
shivered. And that had
nothing to do withthe temperature, which had
started to get chilly...
===================================================================
SHE TRIUMPHS IN PARIS IN FRONT OF
90,000 SPECTATORS Céline sang as if it
were her last time on stage.
The hugh venue was frightening first of all,
but it became very small.
She made it her home.
Manon Guilbert
PARIS - Yesterday evening, René
Angelil did not miss a second of the show
that Céline Dion offered
at the Stade de France in front of 90,000 people.
At his place, in his room, in Florida,
explained Céline with much emotion,
he attended this gigantic spectacle.
" From on our premises, in his armchair,
Rene sees it all, he's with us
thanks to technology. Rene
is well, she affirmed us, although it is
difficult. I am proud of him,
he's very strong. Thank you for your prayers
and your energy. That helped
so much!" The French in the steps and on the
floor of the Stade, largest venue
that she ever visited until now, raised
signs expressing their sympathy
to René. Several, on-camera without their
knowledge by the cameras sweeping
the crowd, showed their tears. As
invested of a mission, Céline
Dion adapted to all this uncountable emotion.
Each one of her songs, all and each
one saying love, took a different depth,
a new direction.
Francophone
Céline Dion, for the French
public, transformed her spectacle. She draws
more from her French-speaking repertory
that anglophone. Jean-Jacques
Goldman, old friend and author to
her last two French albums, with the great
pleasure of the public, joined her
on stage. The effect was instantaneous
surprise. His guitar in shoulder-belt,
he sings with her J'irai où tu iras
avant, a cappella,then S'il suffisait
d'aimer. The public sings with him,
the fire of lighters lights the
ring of the Stage. The moment is magic.
Goldman saves the words, and the
knowing glance which he throws to Céline is
at length. The emotion is
palpable and flashes back onto the public.
Generous, never not forgetting her
beginnings, she is devoted to telling the
facts to them. She thanks her mother,
Eddie Marney and Luc Plamondon,
present in the crowd, by taking
again their songs, of successes like Ce
n'était qu'un rêve,
D'amour ou d'amitié, Ziggy, L'Amour existe encore which,
in turn, propelled her to the height
of her glory.
Love
From beginning to end, for two hours,
Céline Dion accompanies each of the
95,000 people brought together in
this immense stage. Even if she sings all
her anglophone successes such as
The Power of Love, Tell Him, Let's Talk
About Love, The Reason, she will
still say all the same that the most
beautiful language to sing about
love, is French before interpreting Si tu
m'aimes encore. Dressed like
a princess, standing at the rail which is
drawn up on the heart-shaped stage,
she leaves us with My Heart Will Go On.
The Stade, frightening first, soon
became very small! She made it her home.
(With thanks-this was translated
by - a very devoted and sharing Celine Dion fan : Ric)
PARIS (PC) - Only 48 hours to the end of the Printemps du Québec (but that's nothing to see), Céline Dion tackles the gigantic Stade de France for the largest spectacle ever given in France by a québécois artist.
Approximately 170,000 spectators spread out over 45 kilometres of steps will attend the two concerts which will be given by the mégastar this evening and tomorrow on the playing field of the great stage, a mythical place since France won the World Cup of Soccer there less than a year ago.
Few artists played at the Stade de France until now. The Rolling Stones did but really it was Johnny Hallyiday who truly inaugurated it by giving two concert-events that marked the seal of disproportion and "rock' N roll attitude" (in his French version.)
With Céline Dion, using once again an expression heard many times in the media, one enters the field of the "exceptionnel." In an eminently dramatic context.
Her fans know indeed (and the media pointed it out) that the two concerts of Céline Dion at the Stade de France will also be "concerts of good-bye" before her retirement announced for the end of the year.
Nobody is unaware of the serious health troubles of René Angelil. The popular press spoke up & down all week non-stop about cancer of the throat which he suffers - the Pygmalion of Céline Dion, who cancelled half of the 50 shows in her European leg (including those of Marseilles and Lyon)to be near her husband.
She'll return to his side as of Monday, in Concorde, which was affirmed this week by a magazine specializing in the life of the stars.
Wednesday, in front of 65,000 spectators at the Stade du Roi-Beaudoin in Bruxelles, the singer had evoked the health of her husband.
"Rene is doing fine. Thank you for your prayers and your energy which all help us enormously," she had stated from the very start of her song set. She is expected to deliver the same message to her French fans this evening.
These are certainly not ordinary
spectacles that will be given by Céline Dion in Paris. The presence
on the great stage of this Québécoise should make these memorable
dates. This evening, her fans will look at her more intensely than ever
while she moves across the immense heart-shaped stage of 900 square metres
now set up in the medium of the playing field.
==============================================
© La Presse Canadienne, 1999
Ric (translated and posted)
Céline au Stade de France
PARIS (AFP) - Première chanteuse
francophone à avoir acquis une renommée
internationale, qui en a fait l'égale
des superstars anglo-saxonnes de la
variété, Céline
Dion arrive en France pour deux concerts à l'occasion d'une
tournée européenne.
<Picture>Didier Saltron <Picture>
La «voix» du Titanic
sera samedi et dimanche au Stade de France, près de
Paris. Le premier des deux concerts
est déjà complet, ont précisé les
organisateurs. Le prix des places
va de 260 à 800 francs (de 60 à 190
dollars).
La venue en France de la chanteuse
s'inscrit dans le cadre d'une tournée
européenne après des
modifications dues à l'opération du cancer début avril
de son mari et manager René
Angelil. Cette travailleuse forcenée, qui
n'annule qu'exceptionnellement ses
spectacles, a en effet choisi d'alléger
son programme afin d'être
présente auprès de son époux.
Céline Dion arrive en France
sur la lancée du succès actuel de ses deux
dernières productions. Let's
Talk About Love, disque en anglais destiné au
marché international, figure
toujours au hit-parade outre-Atlantique, où il
s'est vendu, après 80 semaines
d'exploitation, à 9 millions d'exemplaires.
S'il suffisait d'aimer, disque en
français, occupe encore la 10e position
des meilleures ventes d'albums en
France, neuf mois après sa sortie.
Deux langues
La capacité de la chanteuse
à mener de front une carrière en deux langues
explique en partie le caractère
international de sa popularité.
Chanteuse francophone au départ,
Céline Dion a percé le marché américain et
international en assimilant la culture
musicale anglo-saxonne.
Parallèlement, elle a fidélisé
les auditeurs francophones grâce à des
productions spécialement
conçues à leur attention.
Ainsi en 1995, alors que sa notoriété
demeurait confidentielle en France -en
dépit d'une reconnaissance
déjà très large aux Etats-Unis- Céline Dion
a
fait appel à Jean-Jacques
Goldman pour l'aider à percer le marché français
et lui a demandé de composer
et de réaliser un disque pour elle.
Le résultat a été
l'album D'eux, vendu à 3,5 millions d'exemplaires en
France, record absolu en la matière.
Records
Depuis, le succès de Céline
Dion n'a cessé de s'élargir. Elle a battu
régulièrement de nouveaux
records de chiffres.
La longiligne jeune femme est ainsi
devenue la seule vedette féminine à
pouvoir rivaliser avec les superstars
anglo-saxonnes du moment : Mariah
Carey, Whitney Houston ou Janet
Jackson. En 1997, elle enregistre la chanson
du générique du Titanic,
un des plus gros scores de vente pour une musique
de film.
Relâche
Le 8 décembre, à l'issue
du premier concert de sa tournée internationale à
Montréal, Céline Dion
a indiqué qu'elle allait quitter la scène pour au
moins un an à partir du 1er
janvier 2000. «Je ne pense pas quitter
définitivement, je suis née
pour ce métier», a-t-elle toutefois précisé.
=================================================
{Translation...}
Céline at the Stade de France
PARIS (AFP) - The first francophone
singer to have acquired international
fame, equal to that of anglophone
pop superstars, Céline Dion arrives in
France for two concerts during the
European leg of her concert-in-the-round
tour. <Picture>Didier Saltron
<Picture>
The "voice" of Titanic will be at
the Stade de France, close to Paris this
Saturday and Sunday. The first of
the two concerts is already sold out
completely, according to the organizers.
The price of seats goes from 260 to
800 francs (from 60 to 190 dollars).
The arrival in France of the singer
lies within the revised schedule for the
European leg after modifications
owing to the operation for cancer at the
beginning of April of her husband
and manager René Angelil. This dedicated
worker, who cancels her shows only
as exceptions, indeed chose to reduce her
programme to be near to her husband.
Céline Dion arrives in France
on the wave of current success of her two last
releases. Let's Talk About Love,
an anglophone album intended for
international markets, always appearing
in the hit-parade on the other side
of the Atlantic, where it sold,
after 80 weeks some 9 million copies. S'il
suffisait d'aimer, her francophone
album, still holds on to 10th position
for best sales of albums in France,
nine months after its release.
Two languages
The ability of this singer to maintain
a two-languages career partly
explains the international character
of her popularity.
French-speaking singer at the beginning,
Céline Dion broke into the American
and international market by assimilating
anglophone musical culture. In
parallel, she has gained favour
with French-speaking listeners thanks to
productions especially conceived
for their attention.
Thus in 1995, whereas her notoriety
remained confidential in France - in
spite of a broad-based recognition
already in the United States, Céline Dion
called upon Jean-Jacques Goldman
to her help to penetrate deeper into the
francophone market and asked him
to compose and produce an album for her.
The result was the album D'Eux, which
sold 3.5 million copies in France,
establishing an absolute record
for sales.
Records
Since then, the success of Céline
Dion has unwavered. She regularly makes
new records of sales figures.
The tall young woman thus became
the only female superstar being able to
compete with current anglophone
stars: Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston or
Janet Jackson. In 1997, she
recorded the song for the movie credits of
Titanic, one of the largest sales
for film music scores.
A Pause
On December 8th, at the end of her
first concert-in-the-round in Montreal,
Céline Dion indicated that
she was going to leave the scene for at least a
year from January 1, 2000.
"I do not think of leaving definitively, I was
born for this trade," however she
stated.
Dear Céline,
How to write this letter without
writing 13 more? Of course, I do
understand why I was asked to publically
write to you, my famous daughter,
but nothing could change my 'sentiments':
my ( mother's ) heart has
fourteen compartments! Also,
what I am writing to you, I adress it to
everone of my children....
I remember, realizing, when you
were a small girl, that you loved singing
and I admit I felt a little discouraged
about that... ''Not another one!'' I
said to myself. I had 13 children
before you, 9 of which were carressing an
identical dream to yours.
9 who also failed with this dream, 9 that I
couldn't have helped, because life
had imposed too many restraints, these,
essential to our survival.
It became an habit, if i can say, to silence
this dream on all of my children.
One day, I started to question myself...
You had this talent, my little bird,
we could not ignore it. But mainly,
you were my 'baby', our baby and
also my last one.... I wanted to
accomplish something with you.
This is when I started to knock on
showbusiness's doors. I was ill equipped
to find myself in these surrroundings.
I was a mother. You know the story,
Céline.... People were
saying to me ''You know, Mrs. Dion... '' Yes, I
knew... I knew I loved you and that
I would forced doors for you....
It was not an earning job to write
songs for a child. I understood that
right away. Also, I wasn't
making it for the money, but.... for love! Have
I told you, Céline, that
the flow of songs I had in my head was waking me up
during the night? I was going
to work aroung 5:00 , 5:30 in the morning,
put on the stoves before the arrival
of the customers, and I was writing
songs for you. For your dream,
which became also mine. I even obliged your
brother Jacques to put music to
my words. ''But I never wrote music, Mom!''
It was better for him to start doing
it!
The rest is history... Now,
I am shivering everytime I see 45,000 persons
applauding you. Shivers of
pride. Shivers of emotions. Mother's shivers.
But it took quite some time for
myself to get there. I was afraid of the
success I had so wished for you.
At the beginning, I thought your notoriety
would take you away form me.
You were surrounded by more and more
professionals, who accomplished
duties that I always accomplished by myself,
until then. Who was more well
placed than a mother of 14 to know how to
take care of a single one?
I felt jealous of all those people surrounding
you... and I thought at the same
time that It was stupid to feel this way. I
had to go through great lenghts
before I would understand that my place
around my 14th child was 'untouchable'.
The day you announced to me you were
in love with your manager, I had to
climb up another mountain...
René was grabbing my baby, my love, away form
me, and I was mad at him for that.
Like a mother. Forgive me, Céline, if
it hurted you. I had my own
dreams regarding your prince charming...
We are, sometimes afraid of being
of no more use for our children.... But
you knew how to prove to me, that
even for a 'planetary' star, nothing
replaces a mother.. Remember
Los Angeles, your sorrow and distress when you
phoned me. René just
felt a little episode ( heart malaise ). You were
then leaving for France to tour.
He couldn't go with you. 'I would like to
be near you, my daughter,''
You answered me ''that's all I wanted to hear,
mother. I need you.''
The day after, we met in New-York, then we headed
for Europe. All of France
were waiting for you, but in my head, we were all
alone in the world.
You are going through another rough
time. It happens, on occasion, to
everyone of my children. Last
week, you reassured me, on the phone:
everything was going well.
You told me that René was taking the vitamines I
had sent him. They are going
to do him good. We exchanged fresh news, and
after that, I could breathe!
I felt a lot better ( up ) , and I went to
sow. I sowed a whole little
outfit, that same night!
We all know that you wish to be a
mother yourself. You and I, are we going
to be alike, as mothers? Maybe,
on certain points. For example, I know
that like me, hard times are giving
you strength and energy. Having said
that, you are going to be a mother
of another era. You won't be sawing
after your children would have reassured
you! You will have an intense
relationship with them, but your
way of living will be different.
I wish you the children that you
desire, but if they do not come, it
wouldn't be the end of the world.
So many children are deprived of
parents....
While waiting, you have many things
to accomplish. Your life is not over,
my child, it is only beginning!
While René was on the operation table, I
looked at you, my daughter, to realize
how alike we are.
I was only 12 or 14 when my father
showed me how to prepare the horse for
labour. The horse was a hundred
times bigger than I, and I was scared.
''You must learn how to approach
it'', father was saying ''Only then will
you control your fear''.
When I saw you take all of René's
friends and relatives and shook them,
reminding them it was not the time
to cry, your courage appeared to me in
all it's greatness. And I
admired you. '' It is your father, it is your
friend but it is also my husband
who is fighting'' did you day. What you
said, my baby, gave strenght to
us all. Though, God knows how scared you
must have been yourself...
'' We must be strong'', you kept repeating
people around you. You knew
how to find the encouraging words for everyone.
It warmed my heart to see you this
way. It is like that, Céline, that we
must approach life.
These days, I devote all my time
and energy for the 'Bal de la fète des
mères'' ( Mother's
day Ball ) which is organised to profit the Achille
Tanguay foundation ( Mrs dion's
father ). I could be with you in Florida, but
I decided to put my efforts towards
this fund raiser which goal is to help
mothers in need, and honored their
courage. It is an act of love, and
everytime I do so around me, it
is to all my children, grand children, grand
grand children I am doing
for equally. It is now my way of being your
mother. It is now my way of
loving you all.
Maman
A flight case marked Dress 555 is
being wheeled by two roadies through
the heart of the vast New Orleans
Superdrome concert hall. At first,
it's backstage, rolling along in
the near dark between a line of 13
white equipment trucks and the giant
curtain that separates this private
territory, from the auditorium itself.
Then the case turns a corner,
into the light, and trundles past
bustling stalls where the good people
of Louisiana are queuing for hot
dogs, beer and potato chips. A little
further and it's heading past tens
of thousands of spectators toward its
final destination: a stage, crowned
by speakers, lights and video
screens, that sits like a visiting
spaceship in the centre of the
stadium.
Suddenly, a girlish
voice rings out, 'It's her! She's in there!'
Sarah Martinez,
aged 14, in absolutely right. Celine Dion, star of
the show, a woman whose last two
albums have sold more than 50 million
copies between them, and who, it's
claimed, sells a record every second
of the day, is inside the flight
case. A few minutes beforehand, I had
watched as she settled into its
padded interior. Someone shouted out,
'Do you always travel like that?',
and she laughed. 'Sure! Why do you
think I get so tired?'
As they had wheeled
her off, members of her backing band called out
jokes and messages in her native
French, to which she replied with a
series of jokey, operative scales.
Dion loves her band and the other 105
people in her touring staff, and
they all lover her, too.
She is, they
insist, a really sweet person. Her marriage to 57 year
old Rene Angelil, the manager who
discovered her when she was a
12-year-old schoolgirl from the
little town of Charlemagne in Quebec, is
not, as cynics maintained, a business
relationship but an affair of the
heart. Her world revolves around
him, and his around hers.
But a cloud,
a very big cloud, has suddenly appeared. Angelil was
recently diagnosed with a 'squamous
cell carcinoma', a cancerous growth
on the right side of his neck, which
almost certainly spread there from
an original, primary cancer elsewhere
in his body. On Celine's 31st
birthday, on March 30, he had emergency
surgery in Dallas to remove the
growth. He has just had six weeks
of radiotherapy and, a according to
his doctor, Robert Steckler, his
prognosis is now excellent.
Within 10 days
of the operation, Angelil was playing gold. 'Dad shot
87 yesterday,' his son Patrick,
the Dion tour's production co-ordinator,
told me in New Orleans. Meanwhile,
in case the radiotherapy has affected
his fertility, Rene has donated
sperm and had it frozen. Celine had
already decided to take the next
two years off to try to start a family;
this, it is hoped, will ensure that
she can conceive. At last, as a
woman in love with the idea of her
band as an extended family, she can
start one of her own.
But were the
primary cancer to prove untreatable, the effect on Dion
would be devastating, for she lives
protected by him in a more luxurious
version of the little black box
in which she is wheeled on stage.
Angelil has even recruited members
of her family. Celine's eldest
sister, Manon, a petite, pretty,
fortyish blonde is one of her two
personal assistants, 'I'm so spoiled!'
trills Celine.
The extent of
this cosseting can be seen in Celine, her authorised
biography published last month.
Author Georges-Herbert Germain describes
Manon's duties thus: 'At the appointed
hour, usually past noon, Manon
comes in to wake her without a word,
without a sound, by gently stroking
her foot, her hip or her shoulders.
Then she opens the curtains to let
the daylight into the room.'
Manon is her
dearest confidante. Yet no one is closer than Angelil.
He is irreplaceable. And when news
of his cancer emerged, the shock
reverberated through the touring
party. At the time, she was in Dallas,
where she was due to perform. 'I
really wanted to go through with it,'
she recalls, because I said to myself,
"You have to show strength". But
it's when you think that you're
the strongest that you're the weakest.
'I had to go
to my crew, my second family, and let them know. So I
said that I wanted to see everyone
for five minutes in catering at
dinner-time. I was so sure of myself,
that I could just let them all
know, short and sweet. But, of course,
I just collapsed for a couple of
minutes.
'It took three
of four moments of being weak. The I had dinner,
rebuilt my strength, and went on
stage. At the end of the show, when I
san "My Heart Will Go On", i started
to cry. And on the way to the
airport, I cried for three minutes,
and then I was okay. I keep
everything inside. I say it's okay
and I take care of everyone. But at
some point, you need to let it all
out.'
Her remarks show
how much natural strength Dion has to draw upon,
for all the protectiveness that
surrounds a diva. Perhaps it comes from
her French-Canadian childhood, which
was very poor. Born in 1968, she
was the 14th child of Adhemar Dion,
a lumberjack and butcher who later
ran a restaurant-bar called Vieux
Baril (The Old Barrel).
With so many
mouths to feed, money was always in short supply when
she was a child. 'Our house was
old and very small,' she said. 'We used
to sleep with three of four people
in the same bed - and the ceiling was
very low; I could touch it, everything
seems to be bigger today!
I can still smell
my mother's cooking. I can see her baking bread.
She had to make so much that she
put it on the piano or in her own
room... Aaah, the smell of that
yeast, I could smell it on my way back
from school - and I hated school!
I remember that very well. I had to
pick off a bit of the bread, even
if it wasn't cooked, just dough,
because it was so good.'
She was adored
by her brothers and sisters. They've been everything
to me,' she says now. 'They'd been
in showbiz before me - some of them
had even made records - wo when
things started to go right for me, I was
happy because I was doing it for
them. They raised me with so much love.
My eight sisters are all like mothers
to me, my five brothers are like
fathers.'
She recalls the
music they made as children. 'The floor would move
because there was so much music
in the basement and it was so loud. My
brothers and sisters were playing
instruments and rehearsing their own
show, and the floor was rumbling.
You could feel the vibration.'
The family had
some local success as semi-professional musicians,
and Celine was singing at family
parties by the time she was five. At
12, she recorded a song her mother,
Therese, had written called 'Ce
n'etait qu'un reve' ('It Was Only
a Dream'). The tape was sent to Rene
Angelil, who had been managing local
artists with limited success.
Celine was not
an obvious choice for stardom. She was not especially
pretty - she had crooked teeth,
a long chin and a big nose - but she had
an extraordinary voice. Angelil
knew that he would take this girl to the
top.
So total was
his faith in her that in the summer of 1981, when she
was still only 13, he mortgaged
his house to help raise money for the
recording sessions that produced
her first two albums. Even when he was
penniless, he acted as though he
and Celine had millions, refusing
offers of work that were not perfect
for the career of a girl who, he
told everyone, was going to be the
greatest singer in the world. His
obsession cost him his marriage:
in February 1985, his wife Anne-Renee
walked out, and Angelil then raised
their two children.
None of this
deterred him. As he said later, 'If you want something
to happen, you have to believe in
it. When I said that Celine would be a
big star, I never doubted it for
a moment. A manager has to believe and
make other people believe'.
The artist has
to believe, too. Celine believes totally in Rene
Angelil. She has never had a serious
relationship with any other man. He
is her manager, Svengali, father-figure
and lover. There have been
plenty of music-men who steered
their wives to stardom - Ike Turner
discovered, then almost destroyed,
Tina; Sonny Bono was both composer
and manager for Cher - but none
in which the process began with an
artist so young, or which ended
with her transformed so completely.
Within a year
of their first meeting, she was singing her mother's
song on television and performing
before baseball games at the Olympic
Stadium in nearby Montreal. As her
teens progressed, she became a star
first in Canada, then France. In
1988, singing for Switzerland, she won
the Eurovision Song Contest in Dublin,
a night that was also the
occasion of her first kiss with
Rene.
Global stardom
was not far away, but even into the early Nineties,
she was still relatively shy and
unsophisticated. When she visited her
record company in London, executives
would desperately try to fill in
the conversational gaps as Celine
struggled with her English.
How much, and
how little, has changed since then. The Celine Dion I
met in New Orleans was an elegant
superstar, her slender figure encased
in a skintight grey pantsuit by
Christian Lacroix. She may hesitate over
the odd English phrase, but her
professionalism is absolute.
She flies in
and out of concert venues in her private Gulfstream
jet, arriving a couple of hours
before the show, and departing before
the house-lights are up. She is
at the heart of a massive enterprise
worth many millions. She talks about
how she needs to stay strong, in
control, for everyone else. And
yet, as she puts it, 'what I like most
is that I remain the baby of the
family'.
Because Celine
has been her family's ticket out of poverty, her
entourage don't see the oddity in
having an elder sister who is also an
abject servant. That's just what
life in the box is like, and the Celine
Machine ensures efficiency, as I
saw first-hand.
Barely an hour
before she was due on stage in New Orleans, I sat in
the lobby outside her dressing-room
while she went through her vocal
warm-up exercises - an extraordinary
spectrum of sounds that swooped
from raucous, hacking grunts, to
delicate arpeggios.
She emerged,
then went to an executive lounge, where she posed for
photographs with executives from
one of her tour sponsors, then cam back
to her dressing-room area. There
were now 20 minutes to showtime, a
period during which virtually all
artists shut themselves away to do -
or take - whatever is necessary
to get themselves in the mood for
performing.
But not Celine.
She briefly chatted with her fellow Canadian, Bryan
Adams, who was in town for a show
of his own the following night. As
on-lookers goggled and flash-guns
flared, they tried to have a
conversation. ' It's crazy here
- nuts,' she apologises.
Adams smiled
reassuringly: 'I know how it goes.'
He was led away
to his seat, and Celine disappeared into her
dressing-room. A few yards away,
in another room, 24 pupils from St.
Charles Borromeo, a local primary
school, were waiting to meet her. They
had been chosen to sing with her
that night and were bursting with
excitement. When she glided into
the room, with a floor-length, grey
silk skirt wrapped around her pantsuit,
she looked like a showbiz
princess. 'We love you, Celine!'
yelled the kids. She said she loved
them, too.
The she got into
a little golf-buggy and was whizzed around to where
her box was waiting. Two minutes
later, she was beside the stage. Barely
a minute after that, the lights
had gone down, the music had begun, and,
suddenly, there she was in the spotlight,
belting out her first number.
The speed and the ease with
which
she switched into concert mode was
astonishing.
And she really
can sing. A delicate ballad like Eric Clapton's
'Tears in Heaven' is handled with
as much aplomb as the belting R&B of
her forthcoming single, 'Treat Her
Like a Lady'. She can move, too. She
covers the stage with a n angular,
almost mannish stride, at one point
breaking into a full John Travolta
routine as her band play hits from
Saturday Night Fever.
Along the way,
she talks. She yacked away fro ages about her golf
handicap, how she was planning to
try and have kids next year, and -
deadly serious now - how Rene was
doing: 'I just want you to know that
Rene is great, he's fine. Thank
you so much for your support.' She
talked about a video she'd once
made in New Orleans: 'The food here...
fantastic! What? You think I don't
eat. I know some people call me Slim
Dion.'
The crowd loved
it. She was opening her heart to them. Except... she
wasn't. After the show, Celine did
not stay in New Orleans to eat its
delicious gumbo and jambalaya. She
walked off-stage to be whisked away
by limo to her home in Florida.
And her heart remained closed, not
because she is a cold person, but
because she seems terrified of really
opening it.
For most great
divas, personal emotion is the wellspring from which
their work flows. But not Celine.
'Normally when I'm singing a song, I
become a character and put a lot
of emotion into that character,' she
explains. 'I'm not necessarily singing
about my own dreams or my own
thoughts. But that night, when Rene's
cancer was diagnosed, for the
first time all of those song - 'Because
You Loved Me', 'Power of Love',
'I'm Your Angel', 'All the Way'
- had a meaning for me. So just now,
when I was singing, I had to think
about something else, because it was
too, too hard.'
What might inspire
another artist frightens her. Her strength -
which she admits is really denial
- and her childishness protect her
from confronting raw emotions head-on.
There is real pain beneath that
glossy exterior. Her husband is
sick and she remains childless.
'I'm going to
be a new and free woman for the year 2000,' she says,
fervently. 'I'm going to take at
least two years off and I want to work
on a little baby. I've been very
busy and I need to take a break and be
with my friends and my family.'
It's hard not
to feel that behind her well-rehearsed line about her
desire for a baby, there lurks a
genuine bafflement that she is unable
to do something which has come so
naturally to other women in her
family. She is convinced that she
can't conceive because she has been
working too hard, and talks about
how much she longs to stay at home,
'do some cooking, be bored - you
know, like a normal life'.
So when I asked
her what she would choose if she were told that she
could have children but only if
she gave up her work completely, the
reply was instant. 'Don't even ask
the question. Are you serious?
Without even a fraction of a second,
it's my family. Forget the singing.
I'm not even thinking about it,
forget it.'
Celine Dion performs
in Britain at the end of this month and then
returns for more concerts in July.
But after the concert in New Orleans,
she cut short her American tour
to spend time with her husband. 'Right
now, the most important thin is
that I need to be with him and I think
he needs me to be with him,' she
confides. 'We're one. Him and I
together are one person, and we're
going to make sure that we work this
out.'
She pauses and
says, very typically, 'But thank you so much for
asking.'
David Thomas. From 'The Mail on Sunday
- May 2, 1999.
Dion says she craves "a life of balance,"
but when it comes to living large, she's already got it made. The superdiva
is sitting on the patio of her secluded $3,600-a-day four-bedroom Beverly
Hills Hotel bungalow. So what about that shoe thing? "I love shoes," she
says. "I own less than one
thousand but more than five hundred
pairs. I don't think I'm addicted, but we all have a little something.
Let's put it this way: I'm building a new house because I don't know where
to put my shoes, okay?"
Dion and her entourage, including her husband/manager René Angélil are making the most of a day-long pit stop between her $10-million, nine-bedroom vacation home in Jupiter, Florida, and her sold-out concert tour in the Far East. After this year's world tour, she swears she'll call it quits--at least for now. So, after eighteen nonstop years and selling a staggering 90 million (and counting) CDs--what does the diva who's done it all really want?
"I want to be bored," she says. "I
want to have a picnic, I want to iron René's clothes. I want to
sit down in our cinema room in Florida with popcorn and enjoy Titanic not
feeling that the media are counting how many times I'm crying. My husband
is healthy, and I want to make sure I'm with
him," she says, accenting her amusing
chatter with lively hands, darting light brown eyes, and a Québecois
lilt. "I can't wait to stop."
Hers has been one of the most astounding
triumphs in pop-music history--a tale that began at age twelve, with a
crude demo tape played for producer/mastermind Angélil, and peaked
last year, when Dion grossed $55.5 million in CD and concert ticket sales,
making her the number-one pop diva
of the year. The dizzying ride has
taken its toll. The singer, who stokes her sleek five-seven, size-two frame
with as much peanut butter as she wants and never exercises, is weary to
the bone. "There's been no time to recharge," says concerned Grammy-show
producer Pierre Cossette, a longtime
friend. "You don't want to stop
on the way up."
For Dion, getting a life means being near her aging parents, Adhémar and Thérèse, and her close-knit clan of thirteen older siblings and twenty-eight nieces and nephews. She also hopes prolonged rest will give her the baby she desperately wants. Angélil's mild, if scary, heart attack several years ago only intensified her gnawing sense of urgency. She has cited stress for not conceiving; other rumors blame irregular cycles and anorexia. Dion bluntly denies the latter. "I know the rumors," she says, with a disdainful roll of the eyes, "so I'll scream it: I am not sick! I'm very thin, like everyone in my family."
If weight isn't the obstacle slowing down Dion's baby dreams, the tension and traveling might be. "I have no time to let go and relax. For some women it is easier than for others. Too nervous, whatever," she explains. "But I'm not frustrated at not having a child yet. We're trying. I'm very healthy, René is very healthy. My doctor told me that the more time I travel in an airplane, the more difficult it is to have children. My doctor says I have to stay at home, and not think about it." Would she consider adoption? "Maybe," she says. "I never say no to anything."
Her husband, the father of three grown children, would love to have another child. Because his children, aged twenty-one to thirty-one, are still single, he muses: "I don't know which I'll have first--grandchildren, or children with Celine. That's our number-one goal and dream. Sure, I'm anxious."
Even as a child, Celine had a flair
for entertaining; she had belted out tunes in her parents' bar and restaurant
before her demo reached Angélil. At the time, he was nearing forty;
Celine was twelve. Musically smitten, he mortgaged his home to finance
her first French album. Celine quit school at
twelve, her career exploded from
Montreal to Montmartre, and she was soon the Piaf of eighties power-pop.
At eighteen, she had a major makeover--her
hair was cut, her teeth were capped, her brows were tweezed, and she learned
English in a two-month Berlitz crash course. Two years later she and her
twice-married mentor, then estranged from his second wife, turned their
professional life personal: She still recalls their first kiss, at the
Eurovision Song Contest in Dublin (she won). "We were standing at my hotel
door and he gave me a real kiss good night," she says. "I started to shake.
It was powerful, magic." Not to
mention potentially scandalous, so they kept the affair secret for years.
"I had feelings for her a year before," admits Angélil. "But I didn't
do anything. I didn't want to ruin her life. I was much older. The reason
it worked out is she sort of insisted she was also in love. If she had
not insisted, I would not have pursued it." In 1994, they had their wedding
at Montreal's Notre Dame Basilica, featuring her 22-pound tiara, and a
pearl-encrusted gown requiring a thousand hours to sew.
The couple will eventually retreat to a lifestyle befitting royalty. The chateau they are building will be huge to facilitate sleep-over reunions with the close-knit Dion clan. It will be even more spectacular than their waterside Florida getaway--an 18,000-square-foot limestone Mediterranean palazzo. "This is the first one René and I built together," says Dion. "So it has a lot of love and every corner has been thought of."
May 1999 issue
Http://www.ldj.com/
Following the surgical procedure,
Angélil, 57, began six weeks of radiation therapy to combat the
Squamous Cell Carcinoma Metastatic. He'll require regular checkups once
the treatment cycle is completed. Radiation, however, should not affect
Angélil's all-important goal of fathering a child. (The couple married
in 1994 and were hoping to conceive a child next year.) "From a medical
standpoint," says Dr. Kathleen Behr, an assistant clinical professor of
dermatology at UCLA, "having children is not a problem for patients with
similar illnesses." She adds that the treatment need not affect the reproductive
area.
------------------------------------------------------------
"René is the biggest priority in my life," says Dion. "I want to be by his side as he continues treatment."
Though Angélil's doctor says his prognosis is excellent, Dion, who is in the midst of a year-long world tour, canceled her April 13 to May 7 performances in North America to be with her husband. (She told fans at an April 11 concert in Houston, "Your support means everything to us.") Her brother Michel Dion, who travels with her as an assistant tour director, says that Angélil played golf only days after his surgery and may join his wife when the tour resumes in Europe on May 27. "That's up to him. He's the boss!" says Michel, adding that his sister does not appear overly worried about Angélil's condition. "Or maybe she is," he says, "but she didn't tell me."
LOS ANGELES (Reuters)
``Funny Girl'' Streisand was first
among the century's top female singers with 14 percent, followed
by Celine Dion in second with 8.6 percent, Whitney Houston in third with
7.5 percent, Reba McEntire in fourth with 4.5 percent, Dolly Parton in
fifth with 3.5 percent and Shania Twain in sixth with 3.2 percent.
In seventh was the great jazz singer
Ella Fitzgerald with 2.8 percent, the ``Queen of Soul'' Aretha Franklin
was tied for eighth with Mariah Carey with 2.5 percent each and in 10th
place was country singer Loretta Lynn with 2.4 percent.
``Maria Callas and Edith Piaf were
way below the top 10 and only one of the Three Tenors -- Pavarotti -- made
the cut for one of the top spots,'' Zogby said.
``But the poll shows that Celine
Dion is hotter than hot right now and that the public still loves her song
'My Heart Will Go On,''' he added.
Celine Dion draws incrowd with
high drama
By JOEY GUERRA
Copyright 1999 Special to the Chronicle
Celine Dion wouldn't have to do much
to keep an audience entertained. She has a substantial repertoire of appealing
love songs, and her big-screen connection with a certain sunken ship has
made her one of the best-selling female artists of all time. One sigh,
one sultry look, one clenched fist in the air would be enough to satisfy
fans.
But Dion is no ordinary diva. For
almost two hours Sunday night at Compaq
Center, the irrepressible entertainer
talked, joked and danced amid the music.
"I love to sing, but I love to talk,
too, man," Dion said to the sold-out
crowd.
Dion laced the show with funny anecdotes
and conversational chatter, and it
often seemed more like she was shooting
the breeze with friends than commanding a stage in front of ecstatic fans.
She would scrunch her face up when introducing a song with a corny joke,
and she would point to faces in the crowd when stressing a point. It all
came across as accessible and charming.
Dion connects just as skillfully
with the often dramatic nature of her music.
Dressed in an elegant gray gown,
she rose from the bottom of a heart-shaped
stage to sing Let's Talk About Love,
the title track off her latest album.
Halfway through the song, Dion was
joined onstage by members of the Houston
Children's Chorus, who formed a
circle around the singer as she led them
through the words.
Things kicked into high gear with
Declaration of Love, an uplifting number that was cue for Dion to remove
a skirt covering a pair of glittering pants and begin to shimmy around
the stage. The in-the-round setting proved perfect for Dion's infectious
energy, and she played to every side of the arena throughout the evening's
fast-paced numbers. The reggae-tinged Treat Her Like a Lady found her trading
slick moves and high-fives with a pair of energetic backup singers.
Between songs, a number of fans rushed
the stage with gifts ranging from
flowers and teddy bears to golf
balls, which Dion seemed to especially enjoy.
(She said she picked up golf during
a trip to Hawaii.)
Dion was also showered with get-well
cards and wishes for her husband and
manager, Rene Angelil, who was recently
diagnosed with a form of skin cancer.
"Rene's doing fine," Dion said.
"Your support means everything to us."
Instead of dwelling on her personal
troubles, however, she channeled her
passion into her songs. She earned
a standing ovation for a show-stopping
rendition of The Power of Love,
and her delivery was exquisite on S'il
Suffisait D'Aimer, (If Only Love
Could Be Enough), the restrained title track off her latest French album.
Dion showed her real strength during
The Reason, a swelling power ballad; It's All Coming Back to Me Now, an
epic tale of lost love; and To Love You More, a lush, romantic moment.
They proved a potent trio of flawless pop drama and moved a number of fans
to tears.
Dion is not afraid to follow her
music gloriously over the top. Often, she
would stand center stage, close
her eyes and thrust her head back furiously, inciting screams and cheers
from the crowd.
The show's extravagant trappings
were pared down during a section of the show dedicated to Dion's favorite
songs by other artists, including Eric Clapton, the Beatles and Frank Sinatra.
The best was a hushed, nuanced version of Roberta Flack's The First Time
Ever I Saw Your Face.
Dion shared vocals with Barbra Streisand
-- via video -- for the diva-duet Tell Him. She employed similar tactics
for Immortality, a collaboration with the Bee Gees, after heating things
up during a disco segment that found her in a white suit boogieing under
a glitterball to Stayin' Alive and You Should Be Dancin'.
Every element was in place when
Dion's Titanic love theme, My Heart Will Go On, docked onstage during the
evening's only encore. Dion stood onstage in a flowing red dress as a replica
of the ship's rail appeared and movie scenes flashed on the video screen.
The music swelled, the lights flashed, and Dion raced to the edge of the
rail, just in time to hit her high note. It probably shouldn't have worked,
but Dion made it seem completely spontaneous and genuinely exciting.
http://www.lesoleil.com/
Céline encore sur scène
Elle arrêtera seulement pour
la durée de la radiothérapie
Laura-Julie Perreault
Le Soleil
Céline still on scene
She will stop only for the duration
of radiotherapy
Laura-Julie Perreault
Le Soleil
MONTRÉAL - Malgré le
cancer qui accable son mari, Céline Dion n'a pas encore
interrompu sa tournée. Demain
soir à Houston et lundi à la Nouvelle-Orléans,
elle offrira ses derniers spectacles
avant de rejoindre son époux, René
Angélil, pour le début
des sessions de radiothérapie.
MONTREAL - In spite of the cancer
which overpowers her husband, Céline Dion
did not stop her concert tour yet.
Tomorrow evening to Houston and Monday
in New Orleans, she will give her
last concerts before joining her husband,
René Angélil, for
the beginning of radiotherapy sessions.
« C'est très dur pour
le corps, alors Céline veut être auprès de lui pendant
les six semaines que va durer le
traitement », précisait Claude « Mégo »
Lemay lors d'une entrevue téléphonique
avec LE SOLEIL hier, en soulignant
que les dates d'arrêt de la
tournée correspondent strictement à cette
période très critique
pour le rétablissement de René Angélil, qui est âgé
de
57 ans.
"It being very hard on him, Céline
wants to be near him during the six weeks
of treatment", says Claude "Mégo"
Lemay during an interview by telephone
with Le Soleil yesterday, in underlining
that the last performance
corresponds strictly with this period
which is very critical for the
recovery of Réne Angélil,
who is 57 years old.
En charge des six musiciens et des
trois choristes de Céline Dion, M. Lemay
suit le couple Dion-Angélil
depuis plus de 12 ans. « Je suis toujours avec
eux depuis Incognito, lorsque Céline
est passée de petite fille à jeune
femme », note-t-il, d'une
voix affectueuse. Hier, il était toujours à
Houston, au Texas, en attente du
prochain spectacle de la chanteuse.
In charge of the six musicians and
the three chorus-singers of Céline Dion,
Mr. Lemay has followed the Dion-Angélil
couple for more than 12 years "I am
always with them since Incognito,
when Céline changed from a small girl to a
young woman", he notes, with an
affectionate voice. Yesterday, he was in
Houston, in Texas, on standby for
the next spectacle of the singer
Il raconte que tous ont été
surpris par la maladie qui a frappé René
Angélil. « Personne
ne se doutait de ça. Même René. Lorsqu'il s'est rendu
compte qu'il avait une bosse dans
le cou, il a décidé d'aller voir tout de
suite ce que c'était. Il
a préféré ne pas attendre pour l'opération
». C'est
ainsi que le Dr Robert Steckler,
un réputé chirurgien de Dallas, a procédé à
l'ablation de la tumeur quelques
jours seulement après la découverte du
cancer de la gorge.
He tells that all were surprised
by the disease which struck René Angélil.
"Nobody suspected that. Even
René. When he realized that he had a lump in
his neck, he decided to go to see
immediately what it was. He preferred not
to await for the operation."
Thus Dr. Robert Steckler, a famous surgeon
from Dallas, carried out the ablation
of the tumour a few days only after
the discovery of cancer of the throat.
Très forte
Mégo Lemay se dit très
optimiste quant à l'état de santé du gérant.
« Deux
jours ou trois après l'opération,
il est venu assister à un spectacle. Il
est en pleine forme », affirme
le chef d'orchestre, en ajoutant que la jeune
épouse a fait preuve de beaucoup
de courage pendant l'hospitalisation.
Very strong
Mégo Lemay is said to be very
optimistic for the health of the manager.
"Two days or three after the operation,
he came to attend a concert. He was
in full form," affirms the orchestra
leader, adding that the young wife has
proven to show much courage during
his hospitalization.
« Céline a été
très forte, elle a passé beaucoup de temps avec lui. Elle
allait à l'hôpital
la nuit et elle continuait à donner ses shows. Personne
ne s'est rendu compte de ce qui
se passait », soutient-il, ébahi par le cran
de la jeune femme.
" Céline was very strong,
she spent much time with him. She went to the
hospital that night and she continued
to give her shows. Nobody realized
anything had happened," he said,
amazed by the strength of the young woman.
Selon lui, le couple a voulu clarifier
les raisons de l'annulation des
spectacles le plus tôt possible.
« Ils voulaient dire la vérité et ne pas
laisser libre cours aux interprétations
».
According to him, the couple wanted
to clarify the reasons for the
cancellation of the spectacles at
the earliest possible time." They wanted
to say the truth and not to leave
it open to for other interpretations."
M. Lemay, tout comme la gigantesque
équipe qui suit Céline Dion dans cette
tournée américaine,
retournera chez lui après le dernier spectacle en
Louisiane.
Mr. Lemay, just like the gigantic
team which follows Céline Dion in this
American tour, will return home
after the last spectacle in Louisiana
Le 27 mai, cette grande famille se
retrouvera à Dublin, en Irlande, pour le
début de la tournée
européenne.
On May 27th, this great family will
find itself in Dublin, in Ireland, for
the beginning of the European leg.
Les spectacles annulés, notamment
ceux de Québec et de Montréal, trouveront
tous une place dans l'horaire chargé
de la star au cours de l'automne.
The cancelled concerts, in particular
those of Québec and Montréal, will be
rescheduled by the star to this
coming autumn.
In a press statement released Thursday, Celine Dion announced that she will cancel the balance of her tour from April 13 to May 7 to be with her husband and manager, Rene Angelil, who has been diagnosed with cancer.
Said Dion in an official statement, "Rene is the biggest priority in my life and I want to be by his side as he continues his treatment. I hope my fans will understand and support me in this difficult situation."
Angelil underwent surgery in Dallas last week while Dion was performing in that city. He has been diagnosed with Squamous Cell Carcinoma Metastasis (a form of skin cancer) to the right side of his neck. He has since been released from the hospital and will undergo six weeks of radiation therapy.
According to doctors, Angelil's prognosis
is excellent. When caught early, this form of cancer is rarely life threatening.
Celine Dion has talked about putting her career on the hold to start a family--now she's doing it, to care for family. The 31-year-old Canadian pop star is clearing her concert schedule from April 13 to May 7 to be with ailing husband/manager Rene Angelil.
Angelil, 56, has been diagnosed with -- and undergone surgery for -- skin cancer on the neck, the singer's camp says. He was released from a hospital in Dallas last week. He is next due to receive six weeks of radiation therapy.
"Obviously, this is a very delicate time for Rene and I, but we have been blessed with some of the very best medical attention in the world," Dion said in a statement.
"Rene is the biggest priority in my life, and I want to be by his side as he continues his treatment."
Dion and Angelil wed in 1994. They have worked together as artist/manager since she was a teenager.
The nixed spring concerts likely will be rescheduled for fall.
Dion's best-selling hits include
the Titanic power ballad, "My Heart Will Go On."
She previously has vowed to cut
back on recording and touring in the next year to concentrate on starting
a family.
Now, let's talk about René's cancer. Here is a summary:
Last week, in Dallas, René
beleived he was having a cold and consulted a doctor. The doctor found
a cancer.
"Squamous Cell Carcinoma Metastatic".
Larynx cancer.
Usually, this cancer is related
to tabacco but René never smoked.
He had an operation and he will
have a 6 weeks radiotherapy treatment.
He is having a break while the treatment
in his house, Jupiter, Florida.
Celine is with him and she postponed
her concerts in North America.
Mathieu
Thursday April 8 8:23 PM ET
Celine Dion's husband treated for cancer- By Patrick White
QUEBEC CITY (Reuters) - French-Canadian pop diva Celine Dion has canceled a series of concerts to be with her husband and manager Rene Angelil as he recovers from skin cancer surgery.
Dion, who is in the United States, said she plans to spend some time with her husband immediately at the couple's Florida residence.
``Rene is the biggest priority in my life and I want to be at his side as he continues his treatment,'' Dion said in a statement issued late Wednesday
``This is a very delicate time for Rene and I, but we have been blessed with some of the very best medical attention in the world.''
All Dion's concerts from April 13 to May 7, including those in Quebec City and Montreal, have been rescheduled for next fall. However the singer will go ahead with a European tour due to start in Dublin on May 27.
``I hope my fans will understand and support me in this difficult situation,'' Dion said.
Angelil, 56, was briefly hospitalized last week in Dallas while Dion was touring in the area. He had been diagnosed with a skin cancer on his neck.
``He has tolerated the procedure very well and his prognosis is excellent,'' said Dallas physician Robert Teckler, who added that Angelil was released from hospital last week and will undergo six weeks of radiation therapy.
``He had surgery performed for Squamous cell carcinoma metastatic to his right neck,'' he said.
That type of cancer is a common type of skin cancer usually occurring in spots that have been exposed to strong sunlight.
The burly, bearded Angelil, a former singer, helped elevate Dion to megastardom and later married her in 1994 in a Canadian version of a royal wedding.
He has managed Dion since she was a teenager in the rural town of Charlemagne, near Montreal, and is nearly always by her side.
Dion, 30, is the youngest of 14 children in a musical family. She announced last November she wanted to put her career on hold for a while so the couple can have children and devote more time to family life.
Several of Dion's albums, including ``Let's Talk about Love'', have been top sellers worldwide.
The soundtrack to the Hollywood blockbuster movie ''Titanic'', which featured Dion, achieved multi-platinum status.
Reuters/Variety
Celine Dion: Backed by Duceppe.
A Bloc MP has questioned the Quebec
credentials of Celine Dion, but party leader Gilles Duceppe has no such
doubts.
"For me, personally, I think Celine
Dion is an artist of international calibre and it is possible to be that
and be a true Quebecer at the same time," Duceppe told reporters yesterday.
"There is no contradiction at all."
The Bloc leader was questioned about
remarks by MP Suzanne Tremblay, who declared in February that the pop singer
isn't a Quebecer.
"Celine Dion has become an American
or universal performer," Tremblay told the House of Commons Heritage Committee
in Halifax.
"In her soul she is neither a Quebecer
nor a Canadian. Her songs reflect nothing of what Quebecers experience."
Later, when the committee sat in
Montreal, Tremblay warned, "I think we have to be careful not to fall into
the American cultural trap - when Celine Dion sings in Titanic, she's not
singing anything Canadian."
Tremblay, 62, is the MP for Rimouski-Mitis
who once called Hull, Que., one of the ugliest cities she's ever seen,
and complained of too many Canadian flags at the winter Olympics in Nagano,
Japan.
Dion, the singer's sister, said
the performer, who's on tour now in Dallas, remains tied to the province,
where she owns a home and where her family lives.
"She's a little girl from Charlemagne.
It's in our roots," Denise Dion said.
Duceppe downplayed the issue and
said he hasn't raised it with Tremblay.
He noted the heritage committee
was not discussing Dion herself, but how much Canadian content should be
allowed on radio.
Some broadcasters want a 10-per-cent
cut in Canadian music they now are required to play.
Laurent Saulnier, music critic for
Voir, a Montreal cultural weekly, laughed at the idea that the pop diva
doesn't represent Quebec because her songs aren't about Bill 101 or the
Gaspe.
"The general sentiment is pride,"
he said. "She's the little Quebecer who succeeded on the world stage."
Saulnier said Tremblay's comments
on the singer are unlikely to earn her any supporters.
"It's the best way to not be liked
in Quebec - people here are so stuck on Celine," he said.
Celine Dion created a furor in 1992
when she was quoted as saying the idea of Quebec separation was "appalling"
to her.
Ok, Ms. Tremblay: Now Adapt Your Theory to a Few Other Realities
OTTAWA - Of course Suzanne Tremblay, the Bloc Quebecois MP, didn't mean to suggest that Celine Dion is not a real Quebecer. What she meant to say, of course, is that Jean Charest is not a real Quebecer. Please excuse the faux pas.
Oops! That should have read: What Lucien Bouchard meant to say is that Mr. Charest is not a real Quebecer.
Oh, sorry. Wrong again. The proper phrasing should be: What Quebec's entire nationalist elite meant to say is that Jean Chretien is not a real Quebecer.
Hmm. I'm sorry to inform you that we have a late-breaking correction. All previous versions of this sentence should be amended to read: What Jacques Parizeau and Bernard Landry meant to say was that "ethnic voters," who "vote according to their grandparents' genes," are not real Quebecers.
Well, you can see how all this would be confusing. There are getting to be so many unreal Quebecers -- I like to think of them as virtual-reality Quebecers, or les Quebecois de l'Inforoute -- that it's hard to keep track of the real ones. (Rule of thumb for our readers in Quebec: Unless you personally marched in the streets of Montreal in 1968 to demand a McGill Francais, you are probably not a real Quebecer. Sorry. The good news is, you get a tax cut.)
Ms. Tremblay got into her latest spot of trouble during a Commons heritage committee meeting in Halifax. "In her soul she is neither a Quebecer nor a Canadian," she said of Ms. Dion. "Her songs reflect nothing of what Quebecers experience . . . When Celine Dion sings in Titanic, she's not singing anything Canadian."
Now, the temptation here is simply to add this comment to Ms. Tremblay's hit parade, which includes her earlier complaints that there were too many Canadian flags at the Nagano Olympics; that Mr. Charest's real name is John; and that Joyce Napier, a Radio-Canada reporter, must not know much Quebec history because there is a European accent to her flawless French.
But Ms. Tremblay's latest comment comes in the middle of an unusually fierce feud between Quebec City and Ottawa over what a Quebecer is and who has a right to speak for Quebecers. So let's pick at it a little longer.
The feud erupted over a French cabinet minister's invitation to a Quebec cabinet minister to attend a chat about culture in Paris. Sheila Copps, Canada's Heritage Minister, wasn't pleased and announced she wouldn't attend. There followed several weeks' growling over whether the Quebec government should be allowed to send separate delegations to international meetings on culture.
Not only has Mr. Bouchard, Quebec's premier, decided it should, he's decided the alternative -- Canadian ministers speaking for Quebecers and other Canadians -- is an obscenity. "I will never accept as a Quebecer that Ms. Copps claim to defend Quebec's culture, a culture whose very existence she denies."
Funny: Mr. Bouchard didn't think a federal minister was incompetent to speak for Quebec when he was that minister -- Canada's secretary of state, Ms. Copps' predecessor, in the late '80s.
While we're at it: If a non-Quebecer can have nothing to say about Quebec culture, then by what right does Ms. Tremblay, a Quebecer, make pronouncements about Canadian culture? Now, there may seem to be a gap between asserting that Ms. Copps can't speak for Quebec and asserting Ms. Dion doesn't speak to Quebec. But they're really part of the same nasty business, which is separatism's stock in trade: picking and choosing among your fellow citizens. We're "we" and you're "les autres." Let's redraw the border.
The problem is that in complex modern societies like Quebec, reasonable people will disagree about what constitute defining differences.
What makes Quebec culture Quebecois? French-ness? Then Mordecai Richler must not be a real Quebecer, either, or the Montreal novelist Trevor Ferguson, or the poet Mark Abley.
Right-thinking Quebecers, even nationalists, claim to be shocked by such a suggestion. Mr. Abley and Mr. Ferguson and, sigh, even Mr. Richler are, too, good Quebecers. So does that mean they're alien to the universe of Ms. Copps? Does it mean their writing speaks to the soul of a short-order cook in Rimouski, but is incomprehensible to a bicycle courier in Saskatoon?
The reality, embarrassing as it is to Quebec nationalists, is that identity in Canada is not so polite as to follow political borders. Lise Bissonnette's novels sell better across Canada, in translation, than they do in Paris. Robert Lepage's next film will be shot in Toronto, in English. The Philosopher Kings and Big Sugar, two of Toronto's best pop bands, are more popular in Quebec than in New York.
My favourite example these days is Luc Plamondon. His song Le Temps des Cathedrales was Lucien Bouchard's unofficial campaign theme song last fall. Well,what the hell: If Celine Dion is a bad Quebecer because her largest audience is in the United States, then surely Mr. Plamondon is a bad Quebecer because his largest audience is in France.
Of course that's all nonsense. Mr.
Plamondon is a fine Quebecer. And when his musical Notre Dame de Paris
tours Canada this spring, leaving Montreal for stops in Toronto and Ottawa
-- in French -- we'll see that he's a Canadian to be proud of, too.
Celine Dion Accused Of Lacking
Quebec Soul
By Patrick White
QUEBEC CITY (Reuters) - The publication
of comments by a high-profile Quebec separatist that French-Canadian diva
Celine Dion does not have the soul of a true Quebecer roused music critics
to anger Tuesday.
``This is an aberration. It will
not find any echo here,'' Laurent Saulnier, an authoritative music critic
for Montreal's cultural weekly Voir, told Reuters.
``People love her so much in Quebec,
they identify themselves with her,'' he added.
A report in Canada's National Post
newspaper Tuesday quoted Suzanne Tremblay, a separatist Bloc Quebecois
member of the federal parliament, as saying Dion was not a real Quebecer.
``In her soul she is neither a Quebecer
nor a Canadian. Her songs reflect nothing of what Quebecers experience,''
Tremblay was quoted as saying last February before a parliamentary committee
on Canadian heritage.
The remarks were not widely reported
until this week.
``Celine Dion has become an American
or universal performer,'' Tremblay said.
She said Canadians should be careful
not to fall into the American culture trap.
``When Celine Dion sings in (the
soundtrack for the movie) 'Titanic', she is not singing anything Canadian.''
Tremblay, an outspoken proponent
of Quebec's secession from the rest of Canada, once complained there were
too many Canadian flags at the Winter Olympics in Nagano.
Dion, who inspires pride all over
French-speaking Quebec, was born in the rural town of Charlemagne, near
Montreal, and is the youngest of 14 children in a musical family.
The world-famous pop singer created
a furor in her home province in 1992 when she was quoted as saying the
idea of Quebec separation from Canada was ``appalling'' to her.
Several of Dion's albums, including
``Let's Talk about Love,'' have been top sellers worldwide.
The soundtrack to the Hollywood
blockbuster and Oscar-winner ``Titanic,'' on which Dion was featured, achieved
multi-platinum status.
Dion recently announced that she
planned to take a break from performing to devote more time to family life.
Dion captivates with words of love-By Teresa Gubbins/ Dallas Morning News-04/03/99
Big as the universe and nearly as
bright, Starship Celine dropped down for a landing at Reunion Arena on
Friday.
Performing on a rotating heart-shaped
stage under swirling lights more stupendous than the alien landing scene
in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Ms. Dion wowed the sell-out crowd
with elonnngated vocals, flashy hip sashays and an aw-shucks acting style
that could make Disney World seem like thespian heaven.
Ranked the 12th-highest-paid entertainer
last year by Forbes with an income of $55.5 million, Ms. Dion gave the
audience a fine return on its investment.
Every gesture was large and calculatedly
manipulative, with her eye always, always cocked toward the camera.
During the opening, for example,
a chorus of multicolored children wearing multicolored clothes ran single-file
on stage, then formed a campfire circle around La Diva, all the while singing
their blessed hearts out, with the camera moving in for aren't-they-adorable
close-ups. Later in the song, superimposed over Madame Dion were images
of planet Earth - it being the only force in the
universe larger than the singer
herself.
The theme of the concert: love.
"We are here to talk about love
tonight," she said and then, for the slow ones in the crowd, launched into
a series of songs, all of whose titles included the L-word: "Dedication
of Love," "Because You Loved Me" and "Let's Talk About Love," the title
track from her '97 album. This was a generic kind of love, used as a facile
concert theme and nothing more. She accomplished the most amazing feat:
centering an entire night around an emotion seemingly without ever conveying
any genuine feeling.
The night's toughest moments came
when she attempted to inject "personality" into the show. She talked about
her husband, about golf - and nearly brought the momentum to a halt. The
only endearing part was the fact that her attempts to be glib were often
so forced and awkward.
Technically, there was no shortage
of splendor or big-league effects - the in-the-round stage with its multiple
risers, the disco-style light-infused floor and especially the big-screen
televisions, four of them to reach every one in the audience. There was
simply no escape from Celine and her manufactured tears, with her face
larger-than-life, her every move calculated for maximum effect on those
screens.
To sing big and sing loud and to
sing very long notes is something few people can do. Like a gymnast, she
gamely delivered those notes, once sparking the predictable standing ovation
- which sparked another opportunity for her to mug overdramatically.
Looking a whole lot like Cher with
long, straight hair, she pumped her arms as if she were cheering on a sports
team. But like the songs and the patter and even her singing, it felt empty.
At its most chilling was the "collaborated"
duet of "Tell Him" with a prerecorded Barbra Streisand. Ms. Dion's image
was superimposed on the left side of the TV screen, with Ms. Streisand's
image on the right. As the two sang "together," Ms. Dion gesticulated in
response to Ms. Streisand's words - a wry
smile, a knowing nod of the head.
At the end of the song, she kissed her hand, then placed it on the televised
image of Ms. Streisand's face as it slowly faded away.
Creepy.>
In addition to presenting a memorable
concert, Celine Dion very well could have been taping the pilot for a TV
variety series Wednesday night at Market Square Arena.
Call it That Diva Show, and the
networks would scramble for the chance to air this guaranteed blockbuster
on a weekly basis.
The camera loves Dion, clearly evidenced
by images captured on large video screens facing four sides of the arena
packed with 15,697 fans. Dion also can dance, as she proved during a breezily
nostalgic Saturday Night Fever medley.
And few entertainers can match Dion's
ability to build a rapport with an audience. Performing in the round and
completely at ease, Dion told the crowd she turned 31 just a day earlier,
her best golf score is 87 and it's true that she and husband/manager Rene
Angelil are planning to add a third member to their family. "We're working
on it, and it's going very well," Dion confided.
Finally, let's not forget The Voice
-- the solid-gold instrument that inspires industry giants to seek collaborations
with Dion.
She delivered a crowd-pleasing,
career-spanning variety of songs, with "The Reason" and" Love Can Move
Mountains" being particular highlights. Carole King has a songwriting credit
on "The Reason," a tribute that almost could be termed a Brit pop anthem.
In fact, it's just the kind of song Oasis
needed on its turgid 1997 release
Be Here Now. Written by hired-gun hitmaker Diane Warren, "Love Can Move
Mountains" was a refreshing up-tempo antidote to Dion's titanic collection
of Top 40 epic
ballads.
While some would say Dion's hits
are passionate, others would use the word "overwrought."
Furthermore, what's breathtaking
to some is melodramatic to others.
Formulaic and calculated, on the
other hand, consistently translate into dollar signs for the Quebec native.
Encore selection "My Heart Will
Go On" is an untouchable winner.
Too many of her hits, however, relentlessly
have plowed mediocre choruses into the minds of listeners. While this strategy
makes a song memorable, it doesn't necessarily make it good.
But on a night of exceptional and
all-around entertainment, this quibble quickly recedes.
(Hey!-thanks)
Titanic hit caps singer's sold-out Bradley Center performance
Journal Sentinel -By Dave Tianen
March 27, 1999
Pop-diva Celine Dion performs in
front of a full house Friday night at the
Bradley Center. The concert was
part of her Let's Talk About Love tour.
In the '90s, romance is sung with
a French-Canadian accent.
It would seem only fair to acknowledge
that no recording artist has done more
to define the contemporary love
song than Celine Dion. Consider this. The two
top-selling albums of 1998 were
the "Titanic" soundtrack, which featured Dion's
reading of the massively popular
"My Heart Will Go On," and her own solo
project "Let's Talk About Love."
Friday, Dion demonstrated further
evidence of her grasp of the romantic
imagination with a sold-out performance
at the Bradley Center. It was a lavish
production worthy of Dion's superstar
credentials, with a heart-shaped stage
set in the middle of the Bradley
floor.
It speaks well of any performer
to be able to sell out a venue the size of the
Bradley with an adult audience.
Still, Dion's detractors are ardent
and many. Beating her up because she sings
highly dramatic love songs seems
wrong-headed to me.
That's a valid pop tradition that
runs from Doris Day and Jane Morgan through
Connie Francis and Petula Clark,
to Streisand and now Celine. There's always
been a market for attractive women
with pretty voices singing about love.
A more valid criticism is the accusation
that she tends to oversing, going for
the fences on every song. Friday,
she didn't seem any more prone to bombast
than such sister divas as Mariah
Carey or Whitney Houston. Indeed, during a
reading of Roberta Flack's exquisite
"The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face," she
demonstrated she could sing softly
with nuance and tenderness. And if anyone
missed the point, she followed it
with another subdued effort on Eric Clapton's
"Tears In Heaven."
If there's an argument for putting
Dion in front of Carey and Houston, it's for
what she doesn't do. She has the
wisdom not to feel compelled to write her own
material. As a result she wisely
mines superior material from such talented
people as Carole King ("The Reason"),
David Foster ("To Love You More") and
Bryan Adams ("Let's Talk About Love").
There's no denying that "The Power
of Love" and "To Love You More" verge to the
melodramatic. But they're striking
melodies, and Dion sings them with such
verve as to easily carry the moment.
Indeed, "Power of Love" generated a
standing ovation Friday.
Dion herself is a warm and vibrant
presence who proved more than equal to the
task of winning over an enormous
room like the Bradley. She chatted with the
crowd about her progress as a golfer,
and danced with elan if not great
fluidity during a medley from "Saturday
Night Fever."
There were a couple of points, however,
where the production sailed over the
top. During a video duet with the
Bee Gees on "Immortality," the Gibb brothers
were seen to disappear into the
clouds like disco deities.
And for Dion's closing encore of
"My Heart Will Go On," the stage sprouted a
bow railing that the singer rushed
to at the climactic moment, as offstage fans
blew her long tresses behind her.
Celine Dion's success story
just seems to go on and on and...
Jon Bream /
Star Tribune
LOS ANGELES -- Ten unlit candelabras
were squeezed between the string players.
David Foster, furiously chewing
gum, sat poised at the grand piano to conduct
the musicians. CelineDion, her long
hair in a bun and sunglasses pushed atop
her head, stood at the mike, ready
to launch into her movie-theme song.
Not that movie song. She was rehearsing
"The Prayer," from the animated "Quest
for Camelot," in preparation for
last month's Grammy Awards telecast. Her duet
partner, Italian opera star Andrea
Bocelli, wasn't at the rehearsal (a stand-in
would sing his part). But, rest
assured, Bocelli will be with Dion tonight when
they reprise their performance on
the Academy Awards show.
Dion, fresh from Hawaii with a glowing
tan, seemed very focused during the four
run-throughs with the orchestra.
Standing next to the stand-in, she seemed
oblivious to the 100 people in the
nearly empty auditorium who clapped after
each rendition. During the applause,
the singer turned around to consult with
Foster, the song's co-composer.
"Thank you, Celine, for coming,"
the voice of the rehearsal's director boomed
from out of nowhere. "David, take
your piano and go home, please."
Dion darted from the stage, entourage
in tow. She did a quickie interview with
CBS-TV in one aisle of the auditorium,
bounced over to VH1 cameras in another
aisle, and then to yet another camera
crew, moving like a please-'em-all
presidential candidate at a campaign
stop.
You'd think she'd get sick of the
same questions. Everyone asks about her
"Titanic" triumph, the Oscar-and
Grammy-winning "My Heart Will Go On."
Would she like to see the Titanic
exhibit in St. Paul when she comes to town
for a concert Thursday at Target
Center?
"Definitely," she said. "The problem
with my life is to find time. There's a
lot of things I want to do and see.
Especially being part of the Titanic, you'd
love to see all those wonderful
things. I don't know if when I'm there I'll
have the time.
"Otherwise, this is something I'll
do in my years off. All the things I want to
do in my life and see, this is something
I'll probably do."
Dion's life has been sailing out
of control for the past two years. But it goes
beyond "Titanic." That movie soundtrack
may have been the biggest-selling album
of 1998, with 10 million sold in
the United States, Dion's own CD "Let's Talk
About Love" ranked second, with
8 million sold. She also had the year's
best-selling holiday album, "These
Are Special Times" (3 million), which
included a No. 1 hit duet with R.
Kelly, "I'm Your Angel." And she could be
heard on the "VH1 Divas Live" CD
with Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston, Mariah
Carey and Shania Twain.
How can Dion top '98?
"I'm not going to try to beat any
years," said the fast-talking singer.
" 'Ninety-seven was great, '98 was
spectacular. 'Titanic' was, of course,
great. We'll be touring till the
end of '99. Then we'll have a little baby --
hopefully. I'm going to stay home
with my friends and family and do some normal
things -- cooking, ironing, washing
the clothes, groceries, beating Rene
[Angelil, her husband-manager] at
golf, riding my own car -- no more limo
chauffeurs. Just a normal life."
Impoverished childhood
Dion, who turns 31 next week, grew
up the youngest of 14 children in a
truck-stop town 12 miles east of
Montreal. It was a hard childhood, as they
shared four bedrooms and one bathroom
and washed their clothes by hand, making
do on the $165 their father earned
weekly as a butcher.
Inspired by her siblings' records
of Creedence Clearwater Revival and Aretha
Franklin, Celine first sang publicly
at age 5 at her brother's wedding. Five
years later, she was performing
in a piano bar that her parents had opened. At
12, she sent a demo tape to Angelil,
a local manager, and he guaranteed her
parents that she would be a star
within five years. It took only two. She
became a force in French-speaking
Canada and France.
At age 18, she took two years off
to study English. In 1990, at age 22, she
broke through on U.S. radio with
the swelling ballad "Where Does My Heart Beat
Now." Then came the hit duet with
Peabo Bryson from the film "Beauty and the
Beast," and she's been on a roll
ever since. Sales of her 11 albums have topped
100 million. She's recorded duets
with Barbra Streisand and Luciano Pavarotti.
A big stamp of approval came when
she sang a duet with Aretha on "Natural
Woman" last year on "VH1 Divas Live."
Dion's duet on "The Prayer" with
Bocelli -- half in English, half in Italian --
made noise in movie houses and on
her November TV special. "It's probably the
closest I'll ever get to classical
music," she said. "I'm not an opera singer;
we all know that. But I admire classical
singers. Andrea Bocelli, he's a
handsome man and very, very talented."
Bocelli said of Dion, through an
interpreter backstage at the Grammys: "Her
voice is an instrument, and it's
beautiful. And it brings us together."
Dion's demo
While Dion made headlines in 1994
by marrying Angelil, who is 25 years her
senior (he has children her age
from a previous marriage), there seems no
question that her life will always
be defined by "My Heart Will Go On."
Composer James Horner said she was
his first choice because the song has such
an expansive range. "Technically,
her voice is very operatic," he said
backstage at the Grammys. "She insisted
on singing the demo, which is unheard
of [for a star]. It was so moving
and so beautiful, we used it."
Why has the song been so huge?
"It spoke to a lot of people; it
was very romantic in a wistful, timeless way,"
Horner said. "It didn't appeal to
any one age in particular. But I had no idea
this afterlife would happen."
Said Dion: "In my book, 'My Heart
Will Go On' is not a hit. 'My Heart Will Go
On' is an experience. It's a song
that will remain forever in everybody's
heart. It's not a big success that
people will forget tomorrow. Last year, it
was hot; this year, it's even as
hot. Next year, it will still go on and on."
Maybe some folks are tired of hearing
it. Not the singer. "I can never get
tired of it. Because every night
even if I think about it before every show,
'Oh, tonight is going to be my 1,000th
time singing it. . . . ' But when it
starts, people are going so crazy,
they make me forget that I've been singing
it so many times. It's like the
first time every time."
How many times has she seen "Titanic"?
"I saw the movie two times. I have
the tape at home, so when I retire, I'll
watch it again and again, believe
me -- with popcorn and the whole thing."
By CAROL DEEGAN
Last year, it was Minnie Driver's garnet dress by Randolph Duke for Halston.
This year, the most memorable dress at the Oscars was Gwyneth Paltrow's pink evening gown by Ralph Lauren.
Paltrow, winner of the Oscar for best actress, was a beautiful princess in pink.
``Gwyneth's dress definitely was a show-stopper from every level,'' said Tom Julian, trend analyst for Oscar.com and Fallon McElligott Advertising.
Oscar fashion was elegant, glamorous and even a little cutting edge. (Celine Dion's backward white suit by John Galliano for Christian Dior was perhaps too fashion-forward.) But it wasn't cookie-cutter fashion.
``This year, it's about individuality,''
said Randolph Duke, who launched his own company last November. ``Women
want to look beautiful. It's not about putting on a dress.''
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
AP-3-21-99
AP-(by Cynthia Webb)
--LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Celine Dion
may be the next Cher when it comes to making the gutsy fashion statement
at the Oscars.
The Canadian songstress on Sunday
wore what appeared from the front to be a slinky, creme pantsuit from John
Galliano for Christian Dior.
But with a turn, the back looked
like a man's suit -- it even had a lace scarf hanging from a lapel pocket.
The ``Titanic'' singer topped it off with an oversized white fedora and
black, diamond-studded Ray-Ban sunglasses.
The $25,000 sunglasses were going to be auctioned off for charity.
Celine Dion at 30 has decided now is the time to start a family. The singer is in good health, but her hectic schedule makes it difficult to conceive
Elena Cherney and Kate Jennison
National Post
Celine Dion is in good health and just needs a good rest in order to conceive, the pop star's sister said yesterday.
"She needs to stop and take this chance," said Denise Dion, the eldest of the 14 Dion siblings. "She has done so much. If she doesn't take this chance, no one can take it for her."
Ms. Dion, 30, and her manager-husband,Rene Angelil, 57, discussed their desire to start a family, and decided together that Ms. Dion should put her career on hold, said Denise Dion.
When Ms. Dion announced in a trembling voice on Sunday night at the Juno awards in Hamilton, Ont., that she plans to go into semi-retirement, a gasp rose from the crowd of 10,000.
But Ms. Dion's desire to have a baby has been widely reported in Quebec's tabloid press, as has speculation that she and Mr. Angelil are infertile, or that the elegant but rail-thin singer is simply too underweight to conceive. Ever optimistic, Quebec's top psychics have repeatedly predicted that Ms. Dion is about to announce her impending motherhood.
Her sister denied the infertility rumours yesterday, and insisted that Ms. Dion eats heartily.
"It's not a problem," said her sister. "She's in very good health. She takes care of herself. She has her father's body."
Adhemar Dion is tall but very thin, as is Ms. Dion's older sister, Pauline. "And she is expecting her sixth child - now she's really big," said Denise Dion. So, she added, her younger's sister thinness will not prevent her from conceiving.
At 5-foot, 7-inches tall and only 115 pounds, Ms. Dion has been dubbed the "French-Canadian Calista Flockhart," after the stick-like star of television's Ally McBeal, who is also rumoured to suffer from an eating disorder. During an interview with People magazine last month, Ms. Dion ate a salad of hard-boiled eggs, tomatoes, and red onions, and a main dish of pork and potatoes, a menu carefully reported by the magazine.
But it is Ms. Dion's reproductive status, not her weight, that has become an obsession in the Quebec news media, and a running theme in international tabloids and pop magazines. Ms. Dion's publicists field questions almost every week from a journalist who has heard a rumour that Quebec's favourite daughter, and Canada's most famous pop star, is pregnant, said Marianne Lemieux, a spokeswoman for Ms. Dion's production company, CDA Productions.
Ms. Dion's schedule, which includes at least 48 more concerts in Europe and the United States during the next 10 months, is so hectic that it interferes with her health, and might be making it harder for her to conceive, said Ms. Lemieux.
"When you're always in airplanes,
your system is all screwed up,"
she said. "It's hard on the system
to be on planes so much," she said, referring to impact which crossing
zones can have on a woman's menstrual cycle.
Ms. Dion's heavy performance schedule, the reporters who follow her every move, and the stress of living up to her own chart-topping, $200-million reputation, may also be taking a toll on the diva's system, said Ms Lemieux.
"I'm sure once she's able not to fly so much, and the stress is less, then hopefully . . ." chuckled Ms. Lemieux, her voice trailing off discreetly.
"We'll be the first to know," said
Denise Dion, herself the mother of three and stepmother of three. It has
not happened yet, she said.
"We had news last week . . . and
not yet."
Any hint during the last two years
that Ms. Dion is feeling under the
weather has fueled rumours of a
pregnancy that has been anticipated in Quebec since the day Ms. Dion and
Mr. Angelil walked down the aisle of Montreal's Notre Dame Basilica in
1994.
When Mr. Angelil told reporters
his wife had to cancel a scheduled
press conference to rest her voice
for a concert in July 1996, during the Olympic Games in Atlanta, he was
besieged by reporters demanding to know if Ms. Dion was really suffering
from morning sickness.
A few months later, Ms. Dion announced for the first time her plans to take a sabbatical in order to start a family. Her last concert would be on May 5, 1997, she told reporters, and "on May 6, I will probably be pregnant," she said.
But then she ran into Barbra Streisand at the Academy Awards, and Ms. Streisand suggested they "do one together." Ms. Dion was faced with a tough choice, she told Parade magazine. "Things were so hot for me I had to think, 'Is it going to make a difference if I have a child now or in six months?'" She opted to make the hit album Let's Talk About Love, which includes a duet with Ms. Streisand.
Ms. Dion denied in the People interview
the rumours of infertility,
promising that "if I had a problem
with my health, I would let [my fans] know."
Fertility is certainly not a problem
for the rest of the Dion family,
originally of Charlemagne, Que.,
a truck stop about 45 minutes outside Montreal. Ms. Dion is the youngest
of 14 children and her 13 siblings have produced 28 nieces and nephews,
with another on the way.
The family remains close. Two siblings, Michel and Manon, travel with their famous sister. Ms. Dion's parents live comfortably, and the nieces and nephews choose whatever gifts they want from the Toys R Us catalogue at Christmas.
If Ms. Dion does have a baby, she
will probably take off at least a few months after giving birth to spend
time at home, said her sister.
When she returns to her touring
career, "the baby will go too."
-"National Post Online is a production of Southam Inc., Canada's largest publisher of daily newspapers."
Let's talk
about Celine's Junos
Quebec diva takes five awards --
and renews her pledge to start a family
By JANE STEVENSON -- Toronto Sun
HAMILTON -- Quebec diva Celine Dion,
who dramatically renewed her vow to take a break and start a family during
last night's Juno Awards, was thwarted in a clean sweep victory by the
Barenaked Ladies.
Still, Dion had an impressive evening
at Copps Coliseum as she took home a leading five trophies, including best
album for Let's Talk About Love (she performed the title track), and the
previously announced International Achievement Award -- the second of her
career.
"This is, for sure, a great honour
to receive this award," said a sombre Dion.
"And, it's true, I've received many
awards in my life, around the world, and it's a lot. But don't worry because
you probably won't see me on stage receiving an award for a long time because
at the end of this tour I'm planning to stop for a long while, for a few
years at least."
Dion told reporters backstage she
was referring to her previous announcement to take time off to start a
family with husband-manager Rene Angelil.
"First of all, and most importantly
for Rene and I now, is try and start a little family.We won't have 14 children
but we would like to try," said Dion, referring to being one of 14. "To
have a child would be a wonderful dream of ours."
Dion, who just picked up two Grammy
Awards, also won Junos for best female vocalist, best selling album for
Let's Talk About Love and best selling Francophone album for S'il Suffisait
D' Aimer.
"I'll miss music and I'll miss the
fans," said Dion, who will be at the Air Canada Centre on April 29 and
30.
"When they sing with me and they
cry and laugh and just dance with me. This is the best. I'll miss it a
lot but hopefully I'll be back. I hope."
Dion also confirmed she is planning
to release a greatest hits album by the end of 1999.
The singer was upset in her two
other nominated categories by the Ladies, who took home a total of three
trophies -- making them the other big winners.
The Ladies' song One Week notably stole best single away from Dion's huge Titanic ballad MyHeart Will Go On, while their release, Stunt, took home best pop album.
"I'm really proud to be up here accepting this award," said Ladies keyboardist Kevin Hearn, who is battling leukemia and was the only band member at the awards.
The rest of the Ladies -- who appeared
via satellite from a beach in Australia to sing One Week with touring keyboardist
Chris Brown -- saw their recent U.S.
breakthrough acknowledged by the
Canadian music industry and even beat out band favourites, TheTragically
Hip, for best group.
"Hey! We're back!" joked drummer Tyler Stewart, referring to the Canadian backlash that greeted the Ladies on their initial successful in Canada a few years ago.
Meanwhile, The Hip went home with the public-voted award for best rock album for Phantom Power and guitarist Rob Baker was among those picking up the trophy for best album design for Phantom Power.
But the Hip, currently on tour, were
nowhere in sight last night, along with another high-profile winner, Shania
Twain, who won a single Juno for best country female vocalist. Twain is
taking some time off after moving to Switzerland and is also preparing
for her tour, which brings her back here on March 23 to play the Air Canada
Centre.
Oh baby! Celine
wins five Junos
Dion stuns Copps crowd with plan
for 'long' rest
Doug Foley
The Spectator
Barry Gray, The Spectator / Celine
Dion added five more Juno Awards to her collection of 18 last night.
Celine Dion pocketed five more Juno
Awards last night and then told a stunned Copps Coliseum that she is about
to put her Titanic career on hold.
"You probably won't see me on stage
receiving an award for a long time" Dion told the audience near the end
of the 28th annual Juno Awards.
"At the end of this tour I am planning
to stop for a long while, for a few
years at least," she continued as
people in the audience yelled, "No, no."
"It is important and better this
way."
Dion did not elaborate but said
backstage that she wanted to start working on a family.
Maternity appears to be the only
thing that can stop Dion.
She added five more Juno Awards
to her collection of 18 last night and she
treated a wildly appreciative audience
of about 10,000 to two song performances, including the closing number,
Let's Talk About Love, accompanied by 24 members of the Hamilton Children's
Choir.
More Junos: C1
It was just one of the highlights
of a lively and entertaining Junos show that was held in Hamilton for the
fourth time in the past five years.
The city enjoys a good reputation
for hosting the concert-format Junos and did nothing to harm that notion
last night.
Sheila Copps, federal heritage minister
and a good east-end girl, was caught on CBC cameras dancing in her seat
to the hard-rocking band Sloan.
But it was Dion who stole the nationally
televised show by being named best
female vocalist and winning for
album of the year and best-selling album for Let's Talk About Love. Her
S'il suffisait d'aimer was the best-selling
Francophone album of the year.
She walked to the stage to collect
her Juno for female vocalist of the year
dressed in a long, grey and black
sequined dress with a deep V-cut front. A
tanned and smiling Dion thanked
her fans in English and French.
"Whatever we are doing, you are
the reason we keep doing it," said Dion, whose long brown hair was streaked
with blonde highlights. "I love you and thank you so very much."
Of course she may have been smiling
for another reason. Forbes magazine
released its annual list of celebrity
pay cheques yesterday and Dion came in at number 13 with an income last
year of $55.5 million US.
The Charlemagne, Que. native also
received the international achievement award from the Canadian Academy
of Recording Arts and Sciences.
With album sales of more than 100
million, maternity is about the only thing that can slow her down.
And, she was back on stage to induct
Montreal songwriter and producer Luc
Plamondon into the Canadian music
hall of fame.
Dion had most of the Juno spotlight
to herself last night, thanks not only to her five wins but also to the
fact that Canada's other red-hot women stars, Sarah McLachlan, Alanis Morissette
and Shania Twain, were all no shows.
Morissette didn't have any nominations
(you don't need them to attend, Alanis!) but Junos host Mike Bullard joked
that her non-appearance was due "to Copps Coliseum's no shirt, no shoes
rule," a reference to Morissette's nude appearance in a music video.
McLachlan reportedly had scheduling
conflicts and Twain is on a world tour,
that will bring her to Copps for
a gig March 22.
Twain did attend in spirit, winning
the Juno for best female country vocalist.
Leahy, the nine-member family Celtic
group from Lakefield, Ont., who will open for Twain in Hamilton, was named
best country group.
Bullard was an affable host for
the show, that ran almost half an hour over its two hour time slot.
At one point Bullard joked with
a smiling Sheila Copps that there wasn't enough money to finish the show
and asked her to reach into her "Mary Poppins purse" and come up with the
funds. xx
~Céline is mentioned in this month's Ladies Home Journal as being voted their favorite female singer.
~There are two recent publications now on newstands in Southern Ontario and in some areas of the USA(?).
"Celine - Living Legend - Over 100 Intimate Photos of Her Life & Loves" Special Collectors Edition dated August 1999, Issue No.8 American Lifestyles magazine (USPS 011-272: UPC 70989 06698 4) which is published by Globe International Inc. 1350 Sherbrooke St.W., Suite 600, Montréal, Québec H3G 2T4. The mag is 75 pages with lots of new & old colour pix and a couple of adverts. $Can 5.95 (US$ 4.95).
"Celine Dion - A retrospective look at the life of a superstar." Exclusive Photos dated 1999, (UPC 74470 02642 6) which is published by Influence Publishing Inc., P.O. Box 1319, Hudson Québec J0P 1H0. The mag is 68 pages and advert-free with lots of new & old colour and B&W pix. $Can 5.95 (US$ 5.95). (posted by Ric)
HAMILTON –
Dion sails to big Juno win
By ANDREW FLYNN -- Canadian Press
HAMILTON -- Celine Dion's heart
will not go on stage again for a while.
That was the announcement she made at the Juno gala Sunday night.
Dion, who sang last year's Titanic hit, My Heart Will Go On, was the big winner at the 28th annual music awards -- five in all.
"Don't worry because you won't see me on stage for a while," Dion said after accepting the international achievement award from the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.
"It's very important and I think it's better this way."
Later backstage, Dion said she doesn't know when she'll return to show business. She and husband Rene Angelil will relax, play golf and try to start a family.
"To have a child would be a wonderful thing," she said, adding that she is not pregnant now.
"There just comes a time when you want to look back and appreciate your success."
It was a successful evening for Dion, who was named best female vocalist and whose album Let's Talk About Love won best-selling album (foreign or domestic). Her S'il suffisait d'aimer was the best-selling francophone album of the year.
The diminutive diva from Charlemange, Que., has become one of the most popular music artists of all time. She's been showered with international honours, including four Grammys and dozens of awards from as far away as Japan. And Forbes magazine lists Dion as 13th in the 1998 list of the 50 highest earning celebrities worldwide, at $55.5 million US.
But there were other successes as well. A rap group performed during the televised show for the first time -- Northern Touch, made up of urban artists the Rascalz, Kardinal Offishall, Choclair, Thrust and Checkmate.
Their in-your-face energetic take
on the song Northern Touch, weaving into and out of the audience with cameras
following their every move was the high point of the show.
It was a moment that seemed to justify
the Rascalz refusal of the same award last year because urban music has
been traditionally under-represented during the televised awards.
"This is a minor achievement for
hip-hop at the Junos," Rascalz rapper Misfit said accepting their award.
Later, backstage, Offishall said rap will fare better in Canada when the media stop associating it with crime.
"You gotta be serious with this hip-hop -- it's no joke. Hip-hop music, gangsta rap does not cause gang violence, it's time we got that straight."
Toronto's Barenaked Ladies, who performed live via satellite from a beach in Australia where they are touring, snared three major Junos, for best group, best single for One Week, and best pop album for Stunt.
"We like to salt the wounds as much as possible," lead singer Steve Page said, when host Mike Bullard chided the group for being in a warm climate while the rest of the nominees were in chilly, snow-covered Hamilton.
"Salt's not a good thing to mention right now either," said Bullard, who then told them they were winners.
The Tragically Hip, the beloved Kingston, Ont., rockers, were fan favourites, taking the best rock album award for Phantom Power. They also won best album design, for the Phantom Power sleeve design created in part by Hip guitarist Rob Baker.
Rufus Wainwright, whose mother Kate McGarrigle and aunt Anna McGarrigle earlier took the group roots/traditional album for The McGarrigle hour, won best alternative album for his eponymous debut album.
"It's nice to be among the cute, hip people," Wainwright said in the pre-televised award show. "Maybe next year we can be on television."
While Dion was the marquee performer, the show's roster featured the diverse styles and talent that make up Canada's music industry.
Other performers included Halifax indie-rockers Sloan, Toronto R&B singer Deborah Cox and Victoria teenage band the Moffatts. Cape Breton fiddler Natalie MacMaster and Toronto flamenco guitarist Jesse Cooke played an instrumental duet.
MacMaster later won best instrumental album and Cox won the best R&B/soul Juno for her album One Wish.
Best male vocalist went to Jim Cuddy of Blue Rodeo for the work on his first solo album All in Time.
"Aw, this is really nice, thanks a lot," said a beaming Cuddy, who thanked Blue Rodeo co-vocalist Greg Keelor for "letting me do it on my own."
Best country male vocalist went to Calgary's Paul Brandt. Leahy, the nine-member family Celtic group from Lakefield, Ont., was named best country group. And Shania Twain was named best female country vocalist.
The lone hall of fame inductee this year was songwriter and producer Luc Plamondon of Montreal, who rose to fame in the late '70s with the musical Starmania. His latest production, Notre Dame de Paris, will debut in Canada this year.
CELINE Dion's performance Friday
at Aloha Stadium will be her last in Hawaii for at least two years -- maybe
as long as five -- since she plans on "retiring" from show business when
her current tour ends this summer.
"There's a point where you need
to stop and have a balance in your life," Dion says in a telephone interview
from Osaka, Japan, where she's performing tonight. "I need to be with my
friends, the people I love. I've been working for 18 years straight. I
need to refuel, have contact with life, real people and real life. Show
business is wonderful but not real."
And it's time, Dion, 30, says, to
fulfill a dream and have children.
"Mmmmm, yes," Dion coos. "I want
to work on a family of my own, try to have children with (husband) Rene,
drive my own car, go on picnics, travel as normal person, not a performer.
I want to be a housewife and mom.
"And I don't want to have to rest
my voice anymore. I want to talk as much as I want, like right now. Normal,
yes?"
The world's most popular singer
does seem quite normal at this moment. There's no trace of the diva who's
won Grammys and Oscars and made tens of millions of dollars. During a lengthy
interview, Dion laughs at herself, jokes about her golf game, her love
for Hawaii.
The French-Canadian singer has become
Canada's first true global superstar and widely touted as the likely successor
to Barbra Streisand. When Dion married her manager, Rene Angelil, five
years ago, Canadian media called the event the "Royal Wedding."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The "Titanic" soundtrack, on which
Dion sings "My Heart Will Go On," has sold more than 22 million albums,
generating about $275 million in revenue for Sony
Music. (The all time record for
best-selling movie sound-track is 'The dyguard,'featuring Whitney
Houston, at $31 million in earnings.)
But Dion is no overnight success.
It's been 18 years since she made her first record and 10 years since winning
the Eurovision song competition that propelled her to international fame
as a French-language singer.
She was born in tiny Charlemagne,
30 miles east of Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
She is the youngest of 14 children
-- eight sisters and five brothers -- in a musical family. Both her parents
were musicians and operated a small club where on weekends the family performed.
Dion sang with her siblings beginning
at age 5. At 12, she, her mother and brother, composed a French song that
grabbed the atten-tion of future husband Angelil, who was so taken by Dion's
voice that he mortgaged his house to finance the recording of her debut
album.
Her international breakthrough came
when she recorded the title track for the soundtrack to the animated Disney
hit movie "Beauty and the Beast." The song hit No. 1 and garnered
an Oscar and Grammy awards.
"Beauty and the Beast" was the foundation
for Dion's second English language album, "Celine Dion" which produced
four hit singles: "Love Can Move Mountains," "Water From the Moon," "If
You Asked Me To" and "Did You Give Enough Love."
Is she driven to succeed? Dion describes
show business as being like golf.
"You compete with yourself; you
want to beat your last performance or bring your handicap down every time
you go out. I'm very competitive but that doesn't mean I'm not having a
great time. When I do something I just want to do it seriously. I'm serious,
not obsessed."
Which comes through very clearly
when she talks about cutting her career short, at least for a while.
"I know very soon I'll have a long
break, retire from show business," she said.
"I have a big family to reconnect
with, and lots of dreams so I need lots of time for that."
Dion isn't worried about jeopardizing
her career because "I have so much to gain" outside show business.
"I never got into this to win awards
or make money. It's all wonderful and I love singing, but I realize now
that what I want, what I need, is a different kind of happiness."
And besides, Dion said, awards and
success are no substitute for friends and family.
"I don't want to ... just end up
alone with money and gold records," Dion said.
"When you talk to them they don't
answer back."
She "refuses" to wait five years
to retire because "it's much better to do it when I'm on top rather than
wait until people don't want to hear me anymore."
You get the feeling that she may
be trying to muster the courage to leave; that the more she talks about
it the stronger she'll be emotionally when she walks away.
"Honestly, right now I don't know
what else (I can) do after all this success,"
she said. "I don't want a hit, I
want a career."
And if fans lose interest in her
while she's away, "It's OK," Dion said. "I have much more than music in
my life. I'm not afraid of this."
By BILL MOSSMAN
Count yourself among the lucky ones
if you've got a ticket to Celine Dion's concert Friday night. It
just may be the last time you get to see her perform, at least for a
while.
The woman hailed as
the premier contemporary pop vocalist of the '90s plans to take a long
break from the music business at year's end. Just how long a hiatus
is anyone's guess. But after years of touring and enduring a self-described
''hectic'' lifestyle, Celine says she's ready to spend more time
with husband and personal manager Rene Angelil.
And the couple agree
it's time they start a family.
''It's something we're looking forward
to,'' says Celine, who invited MidWeek along for a ride in her limousine
after she arrived in the islands last week. ''It's one of the reasons
why we're stopping the career.
''We're going to stop
for sure, maybe for three years or five years. I don't know how long.
I know I need to have a good time with Rene and have balance in my life.
We've been traveling as artists,
as show business people, all the time and it's hard to live a normal life.
Everything is so hectic and disciplined. It's always stop talking,
train your voice, do the show.
''But I want to be
a traveler with Rene. I want to be a lover. I want to be his
wife. I want him to be my husband. I want to be a mother.
I want to be a good golfer. I want to beat Rene!''
Ah, golf. It's
a game that courses through Celine's veins. She hit her first ball
about a year and half ago. The ball sailed and her spirits soared
with it. Armed with a set of clubs from Callaway, for which
she's done a Tv commercial, she broke 100 for the first time at Wailea
on Maui last year.
''The game is a passion.''
Celine says. ''It's therapeutic for me to do something outside.
My whole life with show business is inside arenas, theaters, and studios.
So to have a chance to go outside
with nature and focus is wonderful.''
She's so into golf,
she even bought her own course in Canada.
Rene has been playing
the game for about 25 years and sports a 10 handicap. But even with
his experience, he dares not give Celine pointers on the game because,
as he jokes, ''we end up fighting.''
''Celine's a 24 handicap
and I'm a 10,'' Rene says. ''So I give her 14 strokes and sometimes
she beats me. But her dream is to beat me without any strokes.''
''I'll get there,''
Celine replies with assurance. For the Quebec- born singer, ''there''
in music terms is at the top of the charts. The youngest of 14 children
turns 31 next month, yet she's already garnered her share of Grammys, Junos,
and World Music awards.
She's collaborated with such artists
as Barbara Streisand, R. Kelly, and Peabo Bryson, and churned out hits
such as If You Asked Me To, The Power of Love, and the Titantic smash,
My Heart Will Go On.
Celine admits her hiatus
from music will leave a void in her life, namely, the joy she receives
from performing live before millions of fans. But one thing she won't
miss is the unique way she's had to communicate with others while on tour.
Because of the demands
she places on her vocal chords, Celine will often ''tap out'' messages
to Rene, family and friends, substituting Morse code for her voice in the
days leading up to a concert.
''It's either I sing
or talk,'' she explains. ''I can't do both because it's too tiring
for the voice. A lot depends on my vocal health. What I usually
do is a day or two before the show, I don't talk.''
Celine's the Juno queen
But this year Canadian bands
also reign supreme
By JANE STEVENSON -- Toronto Sun
Nobody can really touch Celine Dion,
the leading Juno contender heading into the Canadian music-awards ceremony
one week from today at Copps Coliseum in Hamilton.
Dion has six nominations, including
best single for her Titanic ballad My Heart Will Go On, and best album
for Let's Talk About Love, not to mention an International Achievement
Award -- the second of her career.
On top of that, the Quebec diva
has sold a staggering 100 million albums worldwide, including 26 million
copies of Let's Talk About Love, which has also sold 1.7 million copies
in Canada.
"She's incredible," says Daisy Falle,
the new president of the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences.
"How many times are we going to
give her the International Achievement Award?
We don't give it out every year.
It's a special award and you have to earn it.
And, of course, she's earned it."
Dion will also show up to perform
at this year's Junos, while her fellow Canadian divas Shania Twain, with
three nominations, and Sarah McLachlan, with two nods, will not. As for
the fourth member of the golden-diva quartet from Canada -- Alanis Morissette
-- she's not nominated for any Junos this year
after her City Of Angels single,
Uninvited, and album, Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie, were withheld
from consideration.
All of this adds up to the Juno spotlight
moving away from female singers this year -- with the exception of Dion,
of course, and a handful of others, including triple-nominee Jann Arden
and double nominees R&B singers Deborah Cox and Tamia -- and back to
the bands.
Frankly, it's about time.
Among the groups, both newcomers
and veterans, to do well in the Juno race are Toronto's Barenaked Ladies
and Vancouver's Matthew Good Band with four nominations each; Canada's
biggest band, The Tragically Hip, and Toronto's The Philosopher Kings,
with three nods each; and family acts and double nominees, country group
The Wilkinsons and boy-band The Moffatts from Victoria, B.C.
xxxxxxx
Monday, March
1, 1999
That syncing feeling
Give us the gaffes of live performance
By MIKE ROSS --
Edmonton Sun
If you watched the Grammys, you
may have noticed that the performers weren't lip-syncing.
Those were their real voices - unfortunately.
Madonna opened the broadcast by revealing
what an appalling singer she is. Her used gym togs may be worth $39,000
(they're on sale at a Manhattan gallery), but her vocal technique, tone
and pitch are bargain basement. I've heard amateurs sing better.
Alanis Morissette did a nice job,
but she wasn't perfectly bang on tune, either. And even the great Sheryl
Crow hit a flat note or two.
This was a demonstration of real
human voices, warts and all. No cozy studio with teams of engineers and
fancy electronics to do 100 takes and get every note perfect, it was a
live battleground where 100 things can go wrong. I'm surprised Grammy producers
had the guts, given the vast audience that tuned in.
Other televised music shows, such
as the American Music Awards, often rely on pre-recorded vocals. Production-wise,
it's a lot easier - and more common than many people think.
"It's usually done to maintain the
integrity of the product," says local sound engineer Clive Alcock, owner
of Allstar Show Industries. "Television is way less than ideal conditions.
Usually what happens is that we'll run tape in parallel with the live performance
and use it for an emergency standby in case
a mic goes down."
To see entire article go to -Jam!Showbiz
Nowhere was that more apparent than at Wednesday night's 41st annual Grammy celebrations where the men took second stage.
Once again the northern divas -- Celine Dion, Shania Twain and Alanis Morissette -- were big winners, but the night belonged to Lauryn Hill.
Hill, a rapper, singer and songwriter, won five Grammys including album of the year for her blockbuster debut The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.
Women dominated these awards, taking categories that were once the exclusive province of male rock stars -- Sheryl Crow took best rock album and country newcomers the Dixie Chicks beat even the massively popular Garth Brooks in the best country album category.
"It's wonderful that there's a lot of women coming forward in show business and politics and everywhere," double winner Dion said backstage, though she said she's getting tired of the subject.
"I mean good for us. It's wonderful that all the women have so much talent and come forward and show it."
Twain, who also came away with a pair of Grammys, was equally positive about the success of music's women.
"I think that women are just being taken more seriously," she said after the show.
"If you look around you in the world today all professions have women rising to the top. I think there was a period at our age when in our teens we started adopting an equal place in the world."
Madonna won the night's first televised award, besting Dion in the best pop album category for her record Ray of Light.
Song of the year went to the duo of James Horner and Will Jennings who wrote Dion's megahit My Heart Will Go On.
As the performers gathered backstage to take their spots, necks were strained and excited whispers of "Shania!" were accompanied by gasps.
When she emerged on stage, it was obvious why -- in thigh-high black boots and a tight, slinky black dress, Twain was more Pat Benatar than Patsy Cline for her performance of Man, I Feel Like a Woman.
Minutes later she was backstage in a much more elegant long, white dress, transformed from vixen to princess.
"Well, it's the first time I've ever worn a skirt that short," Twain said with a mischievous gleam in her eyes. She said she wasn't too concerned about losing to the Dixie Chicks in the best country album category.
"You never really know what to expect with these things," she sighed. "I'm the biggest seller and every one of those records is the award."
Crow took rock album of the year, beating out the highly touted Garbage album Version 2.0 and Courtney Love and Hole's Celebrity Skin.
During the pre-televised portion of the show, Twain was the first to snag an award, best country song, with her husband and producer Robert (Mutt) Lange. Later, she picked up best country vocal performance for You're Still the One.
Then it was Dion's turn, winning best female pop vocal performance for My Heart Will Go On. Later, she would get one the biggest awards of the night, record of the year, for My Heart Will Go On.
The hit single from the movie Titanic also won best song written for a motion picture.
Morissette was next, taking best rock song for Uninvited from the City of Angels soundtrack. Toronto musicologist Colin Escott won a Grammy for his contributions to the production of The Complete Hank Williams.
"It feels fine," a smiling Escott said backstage.
"We didn't do it (to win a Grammy), we just wanted to do something better, something definitive."
Toronto's Barenaked Ladies, nominated for best pop group, came away empty handed as did Vancouver's Sarah McLachlan, who lost to Dion for best pop female vocalist for Adia.
McLachlan was on hand, however, to present the award for record of the year -- to Dion
After Grammys, Canadian divas capture the world's ear
By Jason Hopps
TORONTO (Reuters) - Not since Neil Young belted out fierce guitar rock and The Band backed folk-rock legend Bob Dylan in the 1960s, has Canadian music charmed so many listeners and won so many imitators.
But this time around, it's ``Canada's divas'' who are capturing the world's attention.
The invasion of Canadian female musicians struck gold at the American Grammy music awards this Wednesday as superstars Celine Dion, Shania Twain and Alanis Morisette each won major awards for their platinum-selling hits.
Along with Lilith Fair founder Sarah McLachlan, Canada's recently labeled ``pop-diva quartet'' have been credited with inspiring a second generation of singer-songwriters, among them Americans Fiona Apple and Jewel. They have also helped to swing the spotlight onto Canada's lesser known, but still thriving rock and techno music scenes.
``The success of these Canadian women is an absolutely incredible story,'' said Aaron Brophy, editor at Chart Magazine, Canada's most popular music magazine.
``They're not recognized as just Canadian artists, they're thought of as international superstars. People are thinking there must be something going on in Canada and they're starting to seek out other bands here too,'' he said.
Canada, more famous perhaps for its ice hockey heroes than its singing stars, has never been considered a popular music powerhouse. Neil Young, often called the ``Godfather of Grunge'', and rocker Bryan Adams have enjoyed enduring, international success, but Canadian artists have traditionally struggled to emerge from the shadows of their American counterparts.
``My picture would be that Canada is a country without a hugely strong musical identity,'' said Andrew Perry, assistant editor at England's Select music magazine.
``We feel all the time that we in Britain are the ones making the best noise, and I'm sure that's the same feeling in America too. But yes, these Canadians each have a good youth following in England,'' he added.
In the past year, Canadians have made more than their share of noise at cash registers and on radio stations around the world.
Alanis Morisette, whose 1995 album ``Jagged Little Pill'' sold an estimated 20 million copies worldwide, grabbed best female rock performance and best rock song at the Grammys for ''Uninvited'' from her latest album, ``Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie''.
Country crooner Shania Twain scored best country song for ''You're Still the One'' while Quebec-born Celine Dion -- who shot to superstardom with her work on the ``Titanic'' soundtrack -- won both record of the year and song of the year for her ``My Heart Will Go On''.
Canadians captured a record 27 Grammy nominations this year, nearly four times as many from last year.
``Each of the four divas come from vastly different backgrounds, from country to pop to alternative, but they've each excelled in their own style of music and carved out their own niche,'' said Brophy.
``Now they've changed their styles a little bit, converging more into the pop middle ground, which has only broadened their appeal. Celine Dion even has dance mixes of her hit ballads,'' he added.
But is there something specifically Canadian about the quartet's style, something about their songs or their lyrics that have captured the world's notice?
``I don't think the Canadian element is an issue at all,'' said Brian Robertson of the Canadian Recording Industry Association.
``Apart from Celine, because of the French flavor to her music, I think if you took a poll of U.S. fans you'd find a surprising number wouldn't even know they were Canadian,'' he added.
Even so, Canadians -- from music industry executives to average fans -- heartily embrace their mega stars, even if Ottawa-born Morisette has relocated to Los Angeles, Dion divides her time between Quebec and Florida and Twain lives in upper New York State with her American husband.
``It's like scouting for a hockey team,'' said Brophy, using
a favorite Canadian metaphor. ``If you find a superstar player somewhere, maybe on an unknown team, you'll wonder if there are any more there. Canadian music can only benefit and grow from their success.''
17:19 02-25-99
Copyright 1999 Reuters Limited.
All rights reserved.
.c The Associated Press
By MICHAEL FLEEMAN
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- First came the ``Miseducation,'' then the coronation.
In a night of victories for women and hip hop, Lauryn Hill won five Grammys -- a record for a woman -- on the strength of ``The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill,'' her solo debut album that crossed musical lines and established her as a force in the recording industry.
Hill's five wins in one night -- album of the year, best new artist, female rhythm and blues vocal, R&B song for ``Doo Wop (That Thing)'' and R&B album -- topped the four Grammys won by Carole King in 1971 for ``Tapestry.'' Michael Jackson holds the overall record with eight awards in 1984.
``This is crazy because this is hip-hop music,'' Hill said in accepting the first best-album Grammy for a hip-hop artist as the usually staid awards show took its biggest step out of the mainstream.
Rap has been eclipsing rock as the dominant musical form for young people, and routinely produces best sellers. Much of the credit goes to Hill, a 23-year-old mother of two whose music mixes rap and R&B and touches on family and political issues. She had won two earlier Grammys with the Fugees.
Shania Twain, Stevie Wonder, the Dixie Chicks and the Brian Setzer Orchestra each were double winners Wednesday night.
Sheryl Crow won for best rock album, and Madonna also picked up her first musical Grammys, including best pop album for her excursion into electronica, ``Ray of Light.'' She also won best dance recording and best short form music video.
``I've been in the music business
16 years. It was worth the wait,'' Madonna said backstage.
``Titanic'' sailed on as the ballad ``My Heart Will Go On'' won four Grammys, including best female pop vocal for Celine Dion and best song written for a motion picture or television. James Horner and Will Jennings picked up the writing trophies.
The Academy Award for best song was one of 11 Oscars for ``Titanic,'' and while the movie's soundtrack was the top-selling album of 1998, with more than 9 million units sold.
Horner told the Shrine Auditorium and national television audiences he initially considered the song just a movie theme.
``It spoke to a lot of people,'' Horner said backstage. ``It obviously was very romantic in a wistful, timeless way.'' He admitted he no longer listens to the song.
AP-NY-02-25-99 1055EST
Honolulu Star
Bulletin Dated: Saturday, February 13, 1999
By Craig T. Kojima, Star-Bulletin
Celine Dion performed beautifully
at Aloha Stadium last night.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dion surpasses all expectations
By John Berger
Special to the Star-Bulletin
ANY doubts about Celine Dion's ability
to draw a crowd or rock the house as a stadium concert act in Hawaii were
laid to rest last night. Aloha Stadium was comfortably full. The weather
was perfect. Dion's performance eclipsed her show here a year ago in every
way possible.
What examples? A questionable remake
or two was gone. Several recent hits and album tracks were added. The video
screens added to Dion's performance without blocking the view of the stage.
The lighting sequences were more effective. The concert sound was clear
even on the loudest numbers. The encores were staged and timed much more
reasonably than a year ago. The show was about five minutes longer than
at the Blaisdell Arena last February but moved more smoothly.
Dion's comments during the show
also seemed more spontaneous last night --
especially when she digressed and
began talking about golf. She looked a bit tired, and perhaps tanned to
the verge of sunburn after a week or so of pre-concert relaxation here,
but sounded well rested and ready to work. Work she did. No question about
it, she's an incredible vocalist.
Dion moves more like a rock star
than a conventional female pop singer. A tight gray jumpsuit accented her
movements and lithe rocker-style poses for most of the night. She seemed
delighted and quite appreciative of the crowd's response.
Celine Dion flashes the 'shaka' sign
to local children who performed with her at Aloha Stadium last night.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Because You Loved Me" became a
community sing just as it did a year ago; the audience participation seemed
more natural and spontaneous last night.
Dion displayed her acting skills
with "Tell Him." The song is a duet with Barbra Streisand (who is seen
on the video screens). Dion responded visually while Streisand sang. Her
ability to react without overacting added to the drama of the song; so
did the work of the video crew.
Dion opened with "Let's Talk About
Love," the title song of her 1996 multi-platinum album. She closed the
night, of course, with "My Heart Will Go On (Love Theme From 'Titanic')."
It is still a glorious signature for her.
Other familiar tunes from her discography
were "Declaration of Love," "The Power of Love" and "Love Can Move Mountains."
"Beauty And The Beast" and "Where
Does My Heart Beat Now" were two surprising omissions. However, Dion's
choice of alternative material was interesting.
A mini-set of four "unplugged" love
songs paid homage to Roberta Flack, the Beatles, Eric Clapton and Frank
Sinatra. A subsequent disco segment found her wearing a Travolta-style
white suit and dancing as Travolta did in "Saturday Night Fever." That
provided the lead-in to a video duet with the Bee Gees and a smooth return
to the present.
All things considered Celine Dion
delivered a performance to equal Janet Jackson's techno extravaganza at
the stadium last month -- and she did it all absolutely 100% G-rated!
Keali'i Reichel made his second annual
appearance as Dion's opening act in Honolulu. This time he opened with
his popular version of the Beatles' "In My Life," included several of his
signature songs, and previewed a song from his next album. It was wonderful
to enjoy his music in such a setting once again.
*The Celine Screen would like to thank Peg(MTK 719) for finding some great Celine newspaper articles...and sharing them.
The Record of the Year award goes
not only to the performing artist, but to the producers, recording
engineers, and mixers that help create a successful recording.
The category is for a commercially released single, or a track
from a commercially released album.
Celine Dion's nomination for "My
Heart Will Go On," the love theme from Titanic, makes her the
first performer in the '90s to make the Record of the Year
finals three times. Her two
previous contenders were also romantic ballads taken from hit movies. Dion
was nominated in 1992 with the title song from Beauty
And The Beast, which she performed with Peabo Bryson. She returned to the
finals in 1996 with "Because You Loved
Me" from Up Close
and Personal. "My Heart Will Go On'' entered the singles chart at No. 1
last year and helped drive two No. 1 albums -- the Titanic soundtrack
and Dion's own Let's Talk About Love. Dion's rendition of the Oscar-winning
song is nominated for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. Dion is
a three-time GRAMMY winner.
With gigantic ambition, Céline Dion still keeps in her heart a disproportionate ideal, which confines naivety, sister of purity: to be rich and famous while remaining modest, to be a uperstar while remaining a normal, healthy, ordinary girl. Céline does not play modest girl. She owes her modesty to a kind of virginity "No, I didn't change!" she protests whenever her québécois fans seem to wonder whether she is still and always their small Céline.
To remain natural. A quite
rare grace in a so artificial an environment.
For a child like Céline,
the exploit becomes superhuman. For Shirley Temple blessed by the
gods of life, one counts a thousand Judy Garlands having sunk with such
glory.
But impossible is not in the repertory of Céline. Carried by her immense talent as if by some full wing, balanced by her honest confidence in life and with people, who knows if she can thwart the laws of media and of gravity to pose finally at the foot on the Star of Small Prince...
Hardly crowned by her industry peers, the other evening, holding in her long frail hands the Grammy most coveted, that of the best disc, all categories, Céline exclaimed in French, in front of 1.6 million televiewers of all nationalities: "Thank you to everyone in Québec! I love you all!"
It was her own way of proclaiming in the face of the world that the umbilical cord was not broken with her motherland, with her first public, her first fans, her mother, who composed her songs which said mom! "It's not so a long time...
The secrect of Céline, it's the spirit of family. Familiar, it has the marvellous claim to be with all, in any time. Sovereign accessible. One conquering to tend. You speak to Céline Dion for the first time, as that happened to me by telephone, in August 1992, and yet, the impression of familiarity is striking. Even if she's using her cellular, travelling between two points of her route, between two strong moments of her schedule, she speaks to you quite naturally, as if you had played at the mellotron together!
"You have the voice of a friend! I believed that it was her!" says me spontaneously to her. And at the same time, you sense perfectly that she would be the same nice girl with any other person. It is written in the sky of stars: Céline Dion will remain "a large nice high-speed motorboat", as said Trenet in her song Me, I like the music hall...
Let's go back in time, a little further...
One snow-covered evening of February 1988, at the Montcalm Palace,
a few minutes before the concert. In the room, runs an unusual shiver,
a merry impatience, as before an amorous appointment. It's been a
long time that one has awaited Céline, the woman.
For a few years, she had disappeared,
time to cross the mark of adolescence carefully. But her hidden life
finishes finally! This evening is her very first evening as an adult
singer, her very first representation, before Montréal, before the
world...
What a privileged moment, for a critic,
to see such a career hatching! It was enough to expect this 19-year-old
girl to sing a song as strong as Your Face, as by Ferland, but better than
anyone, to foresee the continuation...
Here is the transcript of a radio program in HK on Celine. Thank you Sunrise for providing the real audio file. I tried my best to translate word by word, but some of them aren't translated word by word, but the meanings are the same.
(Let's talk about love fade in)
host: On the night
of Jan 25th, I was working in the office until around 7:00. I had
a kinda strang feeling while walking to Kai Tak airport to watch
Celine's concert. I actually had two tickets, I asked some of my friends
to go with me, but then all them weren't interested. Therefore, I
had to asked some of my collegues to go with me who don't usually
listen to English songs. To be honest, the feeling of Celine's
concert, is similar to Jackey Cheng's(HK famous singer). Because
people who usually listen Chinese songs, also go to Celine's concert
because of her reputation. When the show started, I think the volume
is a not loud enough. Is probably because they are afraid of
the loud volume Would affect the people who live around the airport.
But actually, the concert only went til around 11:00, it shouldn't
affect anybody. When Celine came out with the clothing and lighting,
it really made me feel, "Celine has been working in show business
for a long time, and finally, she has become a supertar, very
popular superstar. And her first song was, is also what you're listening,
"Let's talk about love". In the concert, and able to see Celine this
close, I found out that , Celine is not as serious as we think.
She is actually very funny.
On stage, Celine first said she is very nervous, including the band members
on the stage. Because they have been tour around the world
so many times, and this was their first time to perform at an airport.
She was afraid that any plane to touch down that night, therefore,
she even pretended to be a controller who give hand signals to pilots
while a plane touch down. The audiences were very happy. After seeing
the concert, I found out that Celine isn't only a singer, she is
also a great entertainer. I really think that Celine can be an
actress. So Celine, have you received any offer?
Celine: Well, we've
received a lots of offers for me to do some actings. But it was just
like one of the offer that I'm not going to do the "Edith Piaf story".
I mean I definetly don't want to have all the pressure on my shoulder
for a first try, and do a first role. I think the first try should
be not the first role, and be surrounded with the best people, be in a
great movie. But, Edith Piaf is I think is much too much for
a first try for me. Maybe one day I will do it, who knows, but
not for the first try for sure. Reporters: Not Titanic II?
Back to the Titanic? Celine: Back to the Titanic! The new James Bond
girl. (reporters laughed) Host: See, I said Celine is humorous. When
asked whether she will be an actress, she said she won't do Any leading
role for now, but maybe later on. She prefer to do some supporting
roles with some Great actor/actress….etc.(I type …etc, because the
host was just translating what Celine said.) Rumors saying that Celine
is a shopping diva, and she has more than 500 pairs of shoes, which can
Be a competition with the ex-first lady of Philipin who also has a reputation
of buying lots of shoes. During the press conference, many people also
bought up these kind of questions. Celine replied No, off course
not, not 500 pairs, is 600 pairs!! (The Power Of Love fade in) Host: There
were many memorable moments in the concert, and I was most touched by this
song "The Power of love". I was estatic. There are many different
versions of this songs, such as the Famoue Jennifer Rush's version
in the UK. In Celine's version, we can feel the wide range of
Celine's voice. In this concert, I found out that Celine's
also a very good dancer. But her dancing Aren't the modern
type of dance, is the 70s John Travolta like dancing. She even changed
into a White John Travolta suit while dancing. She also invited the
audience to stand up and dance with Her. When she was dancing on
stage, I was thinking, she will be singing throughout 1999, then
She will take a long break and try to have a baby.
This time, Rene is also here in
HK, I really Wanted to ask Rene why to force Celine to take a break?
And what are their plan?
Rene: Well, definitely,
our biggest dream is to first of all, to be fortunate enough to have a
child, that will Be a great reward and great dream. So, after
that, whatever you know the child would like to do, We'll for sure,
we'll wanna support..You see, I have 3 children of my own, one of them
is right Here today. Celine: With the white shirt, Patrick.
Hi Pat. (people applauded.)
Rene: Patrick…the three of
them, they work with us. And Celine, when she was younger, she was
Supported by her parents, when she was very very young.
They always supported her.
She Wanted to sing. Usually, when you are 10, 11, 12, and you
tell your parents that you want to sing, They say, no no no, not
right now. In her case, her mother wrote a song, and they supported her.
So, and I try to support my
children in whatever they want to do.
Host: (Translate the same
thing) ….Patrick, was also there. He was very tall, very big. Actually,
Celine And Rene really have a big age difference, so can really able to
have a child of their own? They Also don't know, and they have
to ask their family doctor. ….(translate what Celine said above)
Celine's mother inspired Celine to have a child, so in the future, Celine
and Rene will try their Best to have a baby. Celine Dion also
belongs to a big family, 13 siblings. And I also saw a Family picture
of their, and I thin Celine is the most beautiful one. In 98, Celine
was very Successful, she was the best selling artist in Europe, and
in US. In Asia, more than 7 million Copies of her album sold in 10
countries. So, what does Celine feel about it?
Celine: Well, when you
are so away…it it's so far from where I live. You don't really…you don't
really Un…not that you don't understand, but you don't really
know how far your music can travel, and When you come here, and you
have this as a reward, it's just amazing that the music is an Incredible
language, and I touched the heart of lots of people, and I'm very
fortunate that my Music can travel and with the help of a lot of
people. And I'm so fortunate to be here tonight. I Had
an incredible time, it's…was our first time, and we..I can't not say that
we were scared but It was a very special occasion for us to come
here and do a show. We got there this afternoon, At the airport,
and tonight it was unbelievable. People stood up and dance with us,
they sang with Us, …the pefect night! It was warm, sky, I mean
no rain no cold, everything was, the whole trip Is….we've been here
3 days, and whole trip has been really incredible and people are really
kind.. So…really it's a perfect trip. And on top of that, all
this, it's just amazing. (It's all coming back to me now fade in)
Host:
Celine loves this trip. Because she and Rene stay here for two more
days to travel around. After Monday's concert, and there were a late-night
press conference after that. She will Travel around on both Tuesday,
and Wednesday, and she will leave on Thursday.
So, what Does Celine
think about this trip?
Celine: Amazing, 3
days so far, and it's beautiful. And tomorrow, I'm very excited,
because tomorrow, It will be a full day for me with Rene. We gonna
do some sight-seeing and I'm not kidding, most Of the time, when
I go to a new country, I never have a chance really to see the city or
the country. So tomorrow, we gonna have a full day, and we gonna
take the little boat, and we gonna take The ferrie, and we gonna see as
much as we can. In one day, you can't do a lot, but as much as we
Can. And maybe some shopping too.(people laughed)
Host:
Shopping diva has to do some shopping!
So, they will go out and see and so some shopping in these Few days.
So, does Celine and Rene uses these opportunities(have a few days break)
to work hard On making baby? Celine: We love to have a baby, and..we
are working on it.(people laughed)It's going very well.(people Applauded.)
Host: Is the most popular singer
in the whole world right now. So what kind of life style does she
like?
Celine: I would like to know
Rene more, he is great manager, and a great husband, and great
father. I Want to know
more about the father, and the husband side of him. And I wanna be with
my Family, and cook and have a normal life. Go for picnic, and play
gofl, I love golf. I wanna beat him someday. So I'll
take a long break, and…just to refuel, bite in life. Do something
else, and then we'll come back, I don't know when, but maybe…I love
to do some acting, so maybe I'll come back with a movie. And if I
come back, for sure, I'll come back with some more music because it's in
me. I love music. And hopefully, I love to learn some languages.
To learn…you know..maybe 3 or 4 languages, that will be incredible.
But for that you need some times. There's a lot of things that I
want to do but right now it's only singing singing singing…it's wonderful
but I need to do something else also. So after my break, hopefully,
I will come back with some more music and movie.
Host:
(translate what she said above)…what
does Celine feel when she sing MHWGO?
Celine: I've seen the movie.
And I know that people want to hear that song, so I'm very pleased and
Everytime is like the first time I sing it even I have sung it for many
many times. It's like the First time, everytime. …(Tell the story
about James Cameron didn't want a singing song and The one we're
hearing is a demo…)
Host: (translate what
she said) (MHWGO fade in)
~The end~
Rhapsody
CARAS press release..
Céline Dion, Canada's highest selling artist and this country's only four-time Diamond Award recipient will be presented with the prestigious International Achievement Award at the 28th annual Juno Awards on March 7, 1999 at Copps Coliseum in Hamilton, Ontario.
The award for International Achievement was first introduced by CARAS at the 1992 Juno Awards to recognize the outstanding achievements of Canadian artists. The creation of this special award was prompted by the worldwide success of Bryan Adams, whose single, "Everything I Do" made it into the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest running #1 single in British history!
Building on her success in 1997, having secured two American Music Award nominations, five Grammy Award nominations and four Juno Awards, Céline continued her domination of the music world with numerous other accolades. In 1998, MHWGO, a song featured in the Hollywood blockbuster hit movie, "Titanic" was awarded "Best Original Song" at both the Golden Globe and Academy Awards. The Golden Globe and Academy Awards were just the "tip of the iceberg" of what would prove to be an extraordinary year. Soon after, Céline followed up these honours by winning "World's Best Selling Canadian Recording Artist" at the World Music Awards and awarded the MuchMusic People's Choice Award for "Favourite Canadian Artist."
In recognition of her contributions to the international music world, to her country, and to her province, in 1998, Canada and Québec gave highest honours to Céline by presenting to her the celebrated and prestigious, "Order of Canada" and "l'Ordre national du Québec." The latter half of 1998 proved to be just as busy and as sweet for Celine Dion. On August 21, 1998, she began a North American arena tour at the Fleet Center in Boston, Massachusetts. The sold-out tour concluded on December 18, 1998 with the last of seven performances at the Molson Centre in Montreal, Québec. She also continued her winning ways, walking away with six Billboard Music Awards including "Album of the Year," "Soundtrack Album of the Year," "Soundtrack Single of the Year," "Album Artist of the Year," and "Adult Contemporary Artist of the Year."
This year promises to be even bigger and better for Céline, having started off 1999 with six Grammy Award nominations, a People's Choice Award for "Favourite Female Music Performer" and three American Music Awards for "Favourite Adult Contemporary Artist," "Pop/Rock Best Female Artist," and "Favourite Soundtrack - Titanic."
The 1999 Juno Awards will be seen live at 9:00pm AT, 9:30pm NT, and 8:00pm ET, CT, MT & PT on CBC Television on Sunday, March 7th from Copps Coliseum in Hamilton, Ontario.
Céline fans can purchase Juno Gala Reception/Show packages. A limited number of Gala packages are available through the CARAS office by calling 416/485-3135 or 1-888-440-JUNO.
"The Prayer," Performed by Celine Dion, Wins the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song: "The Prayer" is the 2nd Track to be Released From Her 4X Platinum Album
"The Prayer," Performed by Celine Dion, Wins the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song:
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 28, 1999-- ``The Prayer'' is the 2nd Track to be Released From Her 4X Platinum Album
``These are Special Times'':
The Second Leg of Her U.S. Tour Begins in March.
550 Music superstar Celine Dion and
her recordings are shining during the 1999 television awards season, as
a winner in three awards ceremonies--including the Golden Globe for Best
Original Song for ``The Prayer''--and as a four-time Grammy Awards nominee.
*In the first nationally televised
entertainment awards show of 1999, ``The 25th Annual People's Choice Awards,''
Celine Dion was named Favorite Female Music Performer. And in another national
telecast, the American Music Awards, Celine won three awards for Favorite
Pop/Rock Female Artist, Favorite Adult Contemporary Artist, and Favorite
Soundtrack (Titanic). *On
January 24th, the 56th annual Golden
Globe nominations were broadcast live on NBC from the Beverly Hilton
Hotel in Los Angeles. The winner for Best Original Song In A Motion
Picture was ``The Prayer''--performed by Celine and Andrea Bocelli in Quest
For Camelot, and heard (as a duet) on the multi-platinum album These Are
Special Times and in her Number One-rated CBS
television special ``Celine Dion:
These Are Special Times.'' *In the nominations for the 41st annual
Grammy Awards, recordings by Celine Dion earned six nomi-nations:
Record of the Year for ``My Heart Will Go On''; Best Pop Album for Let's
Talk About Love; Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for ``My Heart Will
Go On''; Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals for ``I'm
Your Angel,'' her duet with R. Kelly;
Song Of The Year for ``My Heart Will Go On'' (from Let's Talk About Love
and Titanic); and Best Song Written For A Motion Picture Or For Television
for ``My Heart Will Go On.'' The Grammy Awards will be broad-cast live
on CBS from the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on February 24th beginning
at 8pm (ET).
Celine Dion will begin the second
leg of her headlining North American tour on March 25th in Minneapolis,
MN. Please see following page for her current itinerary.
Babies and golf in diva's dreams
By Mary Ann Benitez
STORY: BY the look of things Celine
Dion might be talking about babies this time next year.
Dion will be taking a long break
after her ``Let's Talk About Love World Tour'' in December, confirming
Hollywood press reports that the diva is ready to hang her cape.
``We would love to have a baby and
we're working on it,'' Celine said, turning to the poker-faced man next
to her. ``And it's going very well.''
Her husband Rene Angelil nodded:
``That's true.''
Meet Celine Dion, the French-Canadian
chanteuse who remains as refreshing and unspoilt despite mega-hits such
as the Titanic theme song My Heart Will Go On.
Her record company, Sony Music,
said sales of her records in 10 countries in Asia, including the mainland
and Hong Kong, have surpassed seven million mark.
At The Peninsula, she held court
before a corps of Asian journalists, many of whom were openly Celine Dion
fans, nearly two hours after dazzling an audience of 20,000 at a one-off
concert at the old Kai Tak airport runway on Monday night.
After two to three days of not talking
_ she does this prior to every concert to preserve her vocal chords, she
says _ Celine was on a roll, talking easily for an hour past 1 am to journalists,
several of whom were flown in by Sony Music from Singapore, Indonesia,
Taiwan and the mainland.
``He (Rene) loves those days when
I don't talk, it's his favourite days,'' she said. Apparently she communicates
her needs by knocking: once for yes, two for no and three for I love you.
Seriously, Celine, only 31, is walking
away from her childhood dream _ the success and multi-million record deals.
After 18 years making that dream
come true, Celine is tired of the limelight and says she needs to break
away from her music and devote her time to herself.
``You know there's a point when you
. . .'' she began, in that disconcerting habit of hanging sentences.
``We've been doing this for 18 years,
constantly travelling, recording in French, recording in English and then
touring. It's a lot of hard work. I just need to be with people that I
love very much: Rene who's a little older than me,'' again ribbing her
husband, who is 57.
``I just want to make sure to get
to know him as a husband and a father, not only as a manager.'' The Svengali
impresario has been managing Celine's slow but sure rise to stardom since
she was 12.
``And spend some time with both
my parents, my family, have children of our own, and cooking, ironing,
I mean just have a normal life. Have some time, go for a picnic and play
golf.''
Like basketball's recently retired
His Airness, Michael Jordan, and the ``tired'' world men's tennis No 1
Pete Sampras, golf is also taking much of Celine's time these days.
Hours before her Monday concert
she took to the fairways. (She says she's a 24 handicapper.) In that round
she was trying for a gross 89, ``and I missed the (last) putt''.
Apparently the golf greens have
witnessed some of the famous husband-and-wife spats, again widely reported
in gossip magazines.
Celine did not answer when asked
about the family dispute, but Rene said diplomatically: ``We have difficulty
on the golf course. It's getting better, though. Before we used to quarrel
on the second hole. Now we quarrel on the seventh or eighth hole.''
His wife interjected: ``He's (Rene)
trying to tell me what to do, so that's the problem. But it's getting better.
He doesn't talk as much now because he's afraid I'll beat him soon.''
To jaded onlookers the easy familiarity between the Angelils was surprising
considering the wide age gap between the two and a marriage that began
as an unequal relationship between a manager and his prodigy.
It was obvious that Celine unabashedly
worships her husband. And she shows it, constantly touching him and once
hugging him while he was describing her personal strengths and how she
had remained ``unspoilt by the adulation''.
``She has a fantastic voice as we
all know, but her biggest quality is the person that she is. I think the
way she was raised by her family _ she comes from a very large family with
the values _ I think it shows in the way she sings also. I'm very proud
of my wife as a person,'' this coming from a very reserved Rene Angelil.
The couple could not tell as to
when Celine would resume her career after the long post-1999 break.
``We're gonna take a long break,
just to refuel, do something else and then come back, I don't know when.
But maybe when I come back I'd like to do some acting, and when I come
back for sure I'll come back with some more music because it's in
me. I love music,'' Celine said.
What kind of films? Nothing's firm
so far, but Celine denied she would do one on the life of a French diva.
``Maybe James Bond?'' she said,
swirling her hair and crossing her eyes. Or with Jackie Chan? a journalist
suggested.
In reply, she belted out, ``Everybody's
kung fu fighting.''
Who knows? Perhaps Celine Dion is
doing the right thing after all.
In this fickle world of pop music
where songs and singers last as long as their next hit, making a graceful
exit might be the best when you are still on top of the world.
Copyright © 1999 Hong Kong Standard Newspapers Ltd. All rights reserved. - HKT
Dreams, love linger in a night to remember
STORY: I'M an incurable romantic and I don't cringe at the lyrics: every night in my dreams I see you, I feel you, that is how I know you go on.
So for romantics like me, Celine
Dion's Let's Talk About Love World Tour on Monday was a night of
celebrating romance and love complete with the throbbing strobe lights
and misty stage set, under the soft glow of a half moon _ in the middle
of the old Kai Tak airport runway notwithstanding. Mainly because of the
voice. No other pop diva, except maybe Barbara Streisand, possesses such
a voice as Dion's _ one that can be soft and angelic at times, hard and
edgy at others and so melodious and emotional most times _ hitting the
low and high notes so effortlessly and smoothly.
So even if the lyrics are drippingly
sweet or tearfully cringey, or corny you cannot help but be swept by the
feelings her singing evokes.
Of course Dion has the clout and
the stature to call on her ``many friends'' to collaborate on her music.
We had the double delight of having
Streisand in a pre-recorded video join Dion in a ``live'' duet of their
hit song Tell Him.
Japanese violinist Taro Hakase was
there live to make it a magical night with his violin accompaniment of
Dion's To Love You More.
But my favourite was Immortality,
which Dion sang with the Bee Gees, also courtesy of the magic of high-tech.
Dion opened her first Hong Kong concert with Let's Talk About Love. An incredible entertainer who can give John Travolta a run for his money, she did a take-off of Travolta on the disco floor to the tune of Staying Alive and Jive Talking. She chose her familiar chart-toppers, in non-stop 90-minutes of love songs, occasionally interspersing them with fast danceable tunes such as Just A Little Bit of Love and Treat Her like a Lady. The songs were basically the same selection that she has performed for her world tour, which will also travel to Japan later this week, then to Hawaii and Europe in the summer. ``We change the show (a bit), to adapt ourselves (to that city). But the songs are pretty much the same basically,'' Dion said.
It was also her instant rapport with
the audience that helped for a fantastic night, asking nei ho ma (how are
you?) after her drop-dead intro and saying ng koi say (thank you very much)
after a particularly appreciative applause. The practised ad-libbing helped
too.
Dion said she and her team was ``very
nervous'' not only because it was their
first Hong Kong show but because
they were doing ``for the first time a show at
the airport''.
She hoped the pilots of the aeroplanes
``won't make mistakes tonight'', she said.
Dion's one encore was her signature
My Heart Will Go On from hit movie Titanic.
She had hoped that her airport show
would be ``a smooth flight''.
The diva could not have hoped for
more.
High notes at Kai Tak spectacular
STORY: MORE than 20,000 people crowded onto the tarmac at Kai Tak as French-Canadian diva Celine Dion took them on a flight of fancy with her stratospheric warbling.
Beneath the now scaffolded control tower, the high-flying star belted out the poignant love songs which have catapulted her to international fame.
``Fasten your seat-belts, I hope there will not be any turbulence tonight, this is going to be a smooth ride,'' the 30-year-old singer entreated the audience seated on collapsible chairs outside the now empty terminal buildings.
Promoters DKA Asia were billing the concert _ part of Dion's ``Let's Talk About Love'' tour _ as a one-off at the old Kai Tak Airport, and said earlier some 20,000 tickets had been sold out of a capacity of 35,000.
On a huge stage flanked by two massive screens, Dion was greeted by thunderous applause as she appeared bathed in blue lights and smoke.
Her voice soared above the vast site with crowd-pleasers from her most popular albums Falling Into You and Let's Talk About Love.
There was even a nod to her roots when Dion, who hails from Quebec and whose first language is French, sang the title song from her album S'il Suffisait d'Aimer (If it was enough to love).
With clever video clips allowing her to sing a duet with Barbra Streisand and the Bee Gees, and a nifty piece of footwork for a rendition of Jive Dancing and Saturday Night Fever, she had the near-capacity crowd begging for more.
She brought a nearly two-hour show to a close with a single encore of My Heart Will Go On _ the theme song to the blockbuster Titanic.
The verdict was unanimous: ``Fantastic.''
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