Anyone who hasn't heard her doesn't know the power of singing - that's what Franz Kafka wrote about the singer Josefine, a mouse. The story “Josefine, the Singer or The People of Mice” is Kafka's last text, written with the last of his strength a few weeks before his death. It's not about mice, but about people, as you can imagine.
Kafka's story is about the power of music, about a song that is actually just the whistling of a mouse, but transforms a concert into something magical. It's about a mysterious people's gathering, a communion of souls. Some say: a trade fair. “It is as if we were quickly drinking a cup of peace together before the fight,” writes Kafka, and this sentence could reveal the secret of why Céline Dion’s Paris concerts have developed into a worldwide bonfire at which hundreds of thousands of people warm their souls.
This Saturday evening's concert, like all three before it, begins almost an hour late. But what's an hour when you had to wait six years? In March 2020, Céline Dion gave her last concert in Newark, New Jersey, then had to cancel the tour due to the pandemic. Almost three years later, she made her illness with Stiff Person Syndrome public. The rare autoimmune disease causes pain and muscle cramps. She can hardly move anymore. Her voice fails. But Céline wouldn't be Céline if she didn't fight. She promises her fans that she will return: "If I can't run, I'll walk. If I can't walk, I'll crawl. But I won't stop."
“Céline, Céline, Céline!”
Celine Dion kept her word. She doesn't crawl, she struts, she dances on dizzyingly high heels, she sings like she once did, a little less high, she moves seemingly effortlessly through a colorful repertoire of pop, rock, French chanson, gospel and opera. “The road was rocky and longer than expected, with many stops that were not planned,” she says in French.
Céline Dion's renaissance, which could have been staged as a celebration of kitsch, has a disturbing, spartan restraint. The stage remains dominated by concrete, a mixture of Stonehenge, Le Corbusier and the decor of the film “The Brutalist”. Their changing, fantastic costumes are all black, at most silver-gray. The Canadian Willo Perron, who also stages Rihanna and Beyoncé's concerts, apparently deliberately transformed the stage into a kind of modern cave so that the fire of her voice burns even bigger and brighter. But at times it seems as if the concert took place before the invention of color television.
Then comes the calla lilies. Over the dress, which is embroidered throughout with bronze beads, Céline wears a cape made of pink ostrich feathers, placed on “shredded organza,” as the house Givenchy explains. Elevated as if standing on a cliff, she sings the aria from the first act of “Wally”, inextricably linked to the voice of Maria Callas. "Ebben! Ne andrò lontano". "Well, that's how it goes," Céline Dion, "as far as the sound of the bells reaches, to the white snow, to the golden clouds. To where one weeps for hope, to where one weeps for pain." Anyone in the audience who hasn't taken out their handkerchief by then can no longer be helped. A bouquet of red roses and the pink feather cape form the only splash of color of the evening.
France's GDP is growing – thanks to Céline
Yes, Celine Dion can sing again. She proves it with the global hits “All by Myself” and the inevitable “My Heart Will Go On”, the love anthem from the film “Titanic”. But the most musically surprising things are her interpretations of Donna Summer's "I Feel Love" and the Eurythmics' sweet disco dreams, "Sweet Dreams", which she sings as if they were her own. German and especially American fans will perhaps discover another Céline Dion in this Paris concert, beyond her English-speaking world successes. Again and again she sings her French songs and ballads, many written by the genius Goldman, which are shouted at every party in France and sung along at every wedding like “J’irai où tu iras”. As if “The Power of Love” merged with the power of music.
Kitsch? Perhaps. But only in the ears of those who are not addicted to “Célinemania”, as the French newspaper “Le Monde” diagnoses. All of Paris, all of France has been infected. Metro stations were renamed shortly after her, and karaoke concerts by those who couldn't get tickets take place on the streets. There are now even macaron boxes with the Canadian's likeness. The additional income for the city of Paris is estimated at 500 million euros, where hotel prices have skyrocketed on concert evenings. Economic experts have calculated that France's gross domestic product could grow by 0.02 to 0.03 percentage points thanks to the concert series. Thank you, Celine.
Chicken soup for the soul
Some, like Canadian music critic Carl Wilson, consider their music to be in poor taste. In his book "A Journey to the End of Taste," he tried to figure out what excites people about music that he says sounds like "Oprah Winfrey-approved chicken soup for the soul." Maybe it's because she was a wallflower, a white-trash child, the youngest in a family of 14 children. You can identify with her. When she tells her own story in her songs, she is most credible, Wilson concludes. Or, with Kafka, a shared cup of peace before battle?
“Believe in yourself, hold on to your dreams,” Céline calls out to her audience at the end. She showed how it works. She is a winner. But fragile, human, as fragile as in her documentary “I am: Céline Dion,” in which she spoke frankly about her illness and promised to come back. No matter how. Walking. Creeping. Or, as she shows in Paris, triumphant.
