Pop icon Celine Dion insisted on closing out the Olympic opening ceremony on the Eiffel Tower and flatly rejected offers to accommodate the health challenges that led to her long absence from the spotlight, organisers have revealed.
The French-Canadian’s rendition of Edith Piaf’s ‘L’hymne à l’amour’ under a downpour marked a magnificent comeback for the singer, the first time she has sung live since, in 2022, she revealed her diagnosis of stiff-person syndrome, a rare neurological disease that causes muscle spams and rigidity in the torso and limbs.
Despite uncertainty over the 56-year-old singer’s condition, even after the ceremony’s artistic director Thomas Jolly and his team approached Dion’s management, there was no doubt that drafting in his dream diva was more than worth the risk.
He said: “In an Olympic ceremony obviously you have to have the anthem of the host country and you have to hear it during the ceremony, but in France we also have a third anthem, the ‘Anthem to Love’ by Edith Piaf.
“Together with the musical director we knew we wanted to make it heard during this ceremony, and we knew we wanted to do it with the cauldron.
“We knew it was going to go up in the air, and we thought it would be a beautiful image of Edith Piaf and the ‘Anthem to Love’ because this cauldron in the air is what we wanted to send to the whole world, a message of love.
“So we thought about it but it went really quickly. So, which singer?
“The idea was to obviously talk more to women. Which singer sings about love the best? Obviously it wasn’t very difficult to choose Celine Dion.
“You know, she has a very strong link with France. She is a bridge between our two continents, and so immediately we decided to contact her management, but her health didn’t make it possible for us to make it a reality from the beginning.
“Her willingness was there. She wanted to be on the Eiffel Tower, she was very clear. We offered her other suggestions depending on her health and she said, “Nope, I’m going to do it on the Eiffel Tower because that is your idea, that is what you want.
“It’s a huge honour. She’s doing better, we’re happy about that, and she especially could perform yesterday, last night, on this wonderful song at the place she wanted to, at a moment of the Opening Ceremony that is the most emotional one, when the cauldron is being lit in the city of Paris and Celine Dion on the first floor of the Eiffel Tower.”
Paris 2024 ceremonies chief Thierry Reboul added that, despite weather conditions that forced his team to change plans and make decisions “almost by the second” Dion “never, ever actually wanted to do that anywhere else.”