Forty-eight minutes late

Announced for 8 p.m. with no opening act, Dion walked out at 8:48. The wait turned Plenitude Arena into a single chant of her first name.

““Céline! Céline! Céline!””

Paris claimed her first

A transit station was temporarily renamed for her. Shops joined in. The sushi place across from the arena put a papier-mâché Céline out front holding the menu.

A stone door opens

The huge stone structure at the center of the stage parted, and Dion stood alone in black. She barely moved, letting the ovation build until the tears came.

She opened in French

The first song was “On ne change pas,” written by Jean-Jacques Goldman, whose 1995 album with her, D'eux, is still the best-selling French-language album ever.

The crowd sang it for her

Emotion caught her mid-song and she stopped singing entirely, letting 35,000 people carry the line. She had promised herself she wouldn't cry.

A promise kept

Then she said the sentence the arena had waited years for, plainly, without staging it.

““It was a promise that I made to come back, and we made it.””

Six years off the stage

Her last full show was March 8, 2020, in Newark, as Covid shut live music down. France had waited longer still, since the Live 2017 tour ended in Nice.

Not the same as the Eiffel Tower

Singing Piaf's “Hymne à l'amour” at the 2024 Olympics was one song. Holding a full concert, and a 26-show residency, with stiff-person syndrome is a different job.

Stone that moves

Creative director Willo Perron split the night into four acts built from grey monoliths and brutalist arches. They rotated and opened to reveal strings, a pianist, a gospel choir.

Walking through the desert

Between acts, films by Thibaut Grevet showed Dion crossing a stone landscape toward a vast structure. For a body with new limits, the immovable stone then started to move.

Taking the body back

A later film paired her with a contemporary dancer, all contact and gesture. That idea reached the stage too, when a disco run through “I Feel Love” had her dancing.

Couture, not Vegas

Black and grey couture, diamonds, sequins. Perron's fashion work with Beyoncé, Rihanna and Chanel showed: even the gospel choir entered like a runway procession.

The voice, risk included

It wavered in places and soared in others. Her runs still made the voice sound like a wind instrument, and she seemed startled by notes she could still reach.

She forgot the words

Mid-song, the lyrics went. She laughed, apologized and started again, refusing to pretend that live performance is ever risk-free.

Three words in French

She told the crowd she had learned to live alongside the fragility, to tame it and turn it into her life force.

““I'm going to tell you three words. I am well.””

Two careers, one setlist

“My Heart Will Go On” under a Titanic chandelier, then “Ziggy” from Starmania as a mass singalong. France loves songs America barely knows.

The note she landed

After an aria from La Wally sung alone on a stone promontory with snow falling, she reached for the high note in “All By Myself” and hit it, looking astonished herself.