Celine Dion fans have been following the singer’s latest plans as she continues to regain normalcy following her diagnosis with stiff person syndrome (SPS). Their wait partly ended when Dion ascended the stage for the Paris Olympics opening ceremony, and befitting the occasion, she wore a dazzling Dior dress that itself was a labor of over a month in the making.
The 2024 Paris Olympics formally opened on Friday, July 26, along the Seine River. Dion closed out the opening ceremony as the Olympic Cauldron was lit and the rings opened up before the Eifel Tower. With the landmark as her backdrop, Dion sang “L’Hymne à l’Amour” by Edith Piaf.
Celine Dion’s sparkling Paris Olympics dress is a Dior marvel that took weeks upon weeks to make
Dior has been toiling away with the determination and strength of any Olympic athlete to return to the stage ahead of her comeback at the Paris Olympics. Performing at all seemed out of the picture for the 56-year-old Queen of Power Ballads and so an occasion as momentous as this needed an equally magnificent wardrobe.
That sounds about right for a dress that has 1,640 feet of beaded fringing. A team of Dior tailors worked together with specialized tools to place every last intricate bit of detailing along the dress by hand.
Even Dion was part of the powerful symbolism at the start of the games
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Performing at the opening ceremony in her sparkling Dior dress marks the first time Dion has performed at a large venue since 2020, reports The Guardian, before her battle with SPS limited her ability to sing—among other everyday tasks.
But everything about the comeback performance has been steeped in meaning, including the artist and song she went with. Piaf wrote this uplifting ballad “L’Hymne à l’Amour” in 1949 in the home she bought with her beloved, boxer Marcel Cerdan—however, their love started as an affair, as Cerdan had been married when the two fell for one another. Cerdan once gushed, “There is an Édith Piaf and how lucky I am, a poor boxer brute, to be loved by her.” However, a month after Piaf debuted the song at a New York cabaret venue, Cerdan boarded a flight to join Piaf in America; he never made it, the plane crashing and killing him before they could reunite.
Dion’s story, however, is one of a reunion achieved, of her training night and day, rejecting all thoughts of surrender, to make it back to the stage and back to her love: singing.
“I’ve chosen to work with all my body and soul, from head to toe, with a medical team,” Dion had told Vogue France. “I want to be the best I can be. My goal is to see the Eiffel Tower again!” See it again she did, and then some.