It’s Friday night in Paris, and Celine Dion’s hits are echoing across the 19th arrondissement. Tomorrow, the international superstar will make her much anticipated return to the stage, but tonight, it’s her fans who are belting it out into the microphone.
Bruno Dantas, 40, first saw Dion live seven years ago.
On stage, Bruno Dantas is singing My Heart Will Go On. In front of him, a sea of people croons along with him to the 1997 hit. They’re among the 10,000 people who signed up for Paris Chante Celine, a free, massive open-air karaoke party organized by the City of Paris at Place de la Bataille-de-Stalingrad. With each song, different people take the stage, as the crowd sings along with them.
“It’s a hard song, but it’s amazing to sing it in front of a crowd. It made me feel emotional, because it’s such a romantic song. It was very fun to perform it live,” says Dantas.
The 40-year-old, originally from Brazil, lived in Quebec for a decade and fell in love with the singer. He saw her live in Montreal in 2019, and he’ll be seeing her again on Sept. 25. “To see her again after all those years, it’s moving.”
On Saturday, Sept. 12, Dion will kick off her month-long residency at Plenitude Arena in Paris, Europe’s largest indoor venue. This will be her official comeback after she announced in 2022 that she was diagnosed with stiff-person syndrome (a rare autoimmune neurological disorder characterized by muscle rigidity and painful spasms) and cancelled all upcoming shows.
In March, cryptic billboards with lyrics from Dion’s songs started popping up across the French capital, generating a general frenzy about the possibility of her comeback. And what a return it is: The Paris residency includes 16 shows in the fall, followed by 10 dates in the spring.
Nearly nine million hopefuls from around the world entered the ticket lottery, many of whom left empty-handed. Chatting with Parisians this week, it feels as though almost everyone tried for a ticket.
So rather than moping around, unlucky fans gathered at this loud and cheerful outdoor party on Friday night, channeling their disappointment into song.
With each new tune, they can scan a QR code to connect their phone to an app, which enters them into a live singing competition. On the screens next to the stage, alongside the lyrics, there’s a leaderboard. At the end of the night comes another lottery: Among those with the highest scores, two lucky winners will get tickets to the concert.
Carmen Maria Vega didn’t manage to get tickets for the residency, but she’s here for fun. She came with a longtime friend, and the two are in good spirits. It’s fun to sing Celine with other Celine fans, they say.
Carmel Maria Vega, 42, left, with her friend Rosemary Teixeira, 44.
“She’s one of the greatest voices in the world. She’s a performer, and she’s had an incredible journey. To still be here today is remarkable, because longevity in this business is incredibly difficult, you have to reinvent yourself to keep your fandom so alive and stay close to people,” Vega says.
The 42-year-old has loved Dion since childhood, when she attended one of her concerts in Lyon. She remembers feeling so overwhelmed, she cried through the concert.
At the Paris Chante Celine event, a few moments later, the first notes of Édith Piaf’s Hymne à l’amour echo through the plaza. The 1950s song is arguably one of the greatest French ballads of all time, but Dion made it her own when she covered it during the opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympic Games, performing from the Eiffel Tower two years after announcing her medical diagnosis.
Isabelle Lech and her boyfriend Sébastien De Villepin, both 19, became fans through their mothers.
Sébastien De Villepin, 19, remembers watching it live on television with his mother. “I had tears in my eyes when we saw her on the Eiffel Tower. Honestly, it was so emotional to see her again after so many years. I didn’t know her very well at the time, but my mother did, and seeing her get so emotional, it moved me too.”
He’s here with his girlfriend, who also caught the Dion bug through her mother. The two are singing in their joint telephone, their heads touching.
Nearby, the hip bars on the banks of Canal Saint-Martin are filling up. There’s no shortage of things to do on a Friday night in Paris, but beneath the neoclassical Rotonde de la Villette, this plaza feels like the place to be. It’s busy, loud and joyous.
The artist’s French repertoire is front and centre. Pour que tu m’aimes encore (So that you’ll love me again), S’il suffisait d’aimer (If love were enough), and J’irai où tu iras (I’ll go where you go) get the crowd into deep Dion fever.
The amateur singers are closing their eyes, holding each other and throwing their hands in the air. They hardly need the lyrics projected on the screen, they know every song by heart.
