Celine Dion's return to the stage: an international press review

If the French press has covered and continues to widely cover the return of Céline Dion on stage, the event is international in scope. Media from around the world dispatched special correspondents to Paris to attend the first date of the Canadian star's residency at the Plenitude Arena on Saturday. What did they think? 20 Minutes offers you a little press review…

Let’s start with Quebec, which obviously followed very closely the first concert of its national glory in more than six years… “We were predicted: “Grandiose!”. We were promised: “Monumental!”. It was all that, and more,” says Sophie Durocher, TVA Nouvelles journalist. “Céline went from Vegas bling to Paris chic. And it suits him very, very well,” she notes. “When she reached “her” note in All By Myself, and she gave a knowing look to her musical director Scott Price, we could see that Céline was proud of her. And so do we,” she concludes.

“An elegant voice as possible”

For Didier Zacharie du Soir, the return of Céline Dion “was akin to a resurrection. In any case artistic.” Our Belgian colleague believes that the “diva” has “succeeded in her bet” and “delighted her audience”. On the Il Fatto quotidiano website, Italian journalist Andrea Conti describes Celine Dion as a “force of nature”. He found the concert “spiritual” but also “intense” and speaks of the “punch in the stomach” caused by “the emotions that the artist managed to offer with her graceful voice, elegant as possible, perhaps less powerful than before but still present, captivating and charismatic. »

For Alim Kheraj of the Guardian, the voice of the interpreter of We do not change is not weakened in any way. “When she needs it, like on All the Gold of Men, she is always capable of releasing powerful notes,” he wrote in the British daily.

Nothing “avant-garde”

It was obviously across the Channel that we had to look for little digs at Céline Dion. “For some, his success […] is incomprehensible and his music is the height of sentimentality and insipid variety,” he notes. Before recalling that the 30,000 people who were at the Plenitude Arena on Saturday certainly did not hear it that way. “After all, you don’t expect a Celine Dion concert to have anything avant-garde. » The Guardian reporter was particularly struck by the way the crowd sang Pour que tu m’aimes encore: “the audience’s singing was so loud that it almost drowned out Dion’s voice”.