Céline Dion Closes Olympics Opening Ceremony With First Performance in Years | Video

Céline Dion closed the 2024 Paris Olympics opening ceremony Friday night with a powerful performance from the Eiffel Tower.

After the music legend was spotted in Paris ahead of the celebration this week, speculation ran high that she might be performing for the first time since she was diagnosed with “stiff person syndrome,” a rare neurological disease, in 2022.

After the Olympic flame was lit, Dion sang “L’Hymne à l’amour,” a 1950 standard by the late French icon Édith Piaf, just as French newspaper Le Parisien reported earlier. The French-Canadian singer stood at the base of the Eiffel Tower, looking healthy and with full range of motion as she held the mic in her left hand and gestured with her right. (Watch the performance below)

Kelly Clarkson, one of the many stars acting as commentator for the games, sounded teary as she responded to the performance.

“It’s just incredible what she’s overcome,” Clarkson said. “To have that moment… she’s a vocal athlete.”

NBC did not confirm the rumors that Dion would be performing, nor did French President Emmanuel Macron, who told the media he’d be “immensely happy” if the French-Canadian singer were part of the 2024 Olympics.

Her announcement of her diagnosis came a year after she suddenly canceled her residency in Las Vegas, with cancellations for her 2023 and ’24 Courage World Tour dates following suit.

The condition sometimes feels “like somebody strangling you,” she told “Today” host Hoda Kotb in June.

“It’s like someone is pushing your larynx. So it’s like you’re talking like that, and you cannot go high or lower. It gets into a spasm,” the singer said.

Irene Taylor’s documentary about the “My Heart Will Go On” singer, “I Am: Celine Dion” premiered on Prime Video on June 25.

Taylor initially intended to record Dion’s Las Vegas residency and subsequent tour, but quickly pivoted when both had to be cancelled. Now the film is partially about the loss of Dion’s instrument, as she appropriately calls her three-octave, mezzo-soprano voice, and partially about her refusal to accept this fate without a fight.

“My voice was the conductor of my life,” Dion says at one point in the film, noting at another that “all I know is singing.”

As of June 2024, Dion has sold more than 220 million albums worldwide. According to Billboard Boxscore, she is only the second female artist in history to earn $1 billion in tour revenue, and one of only eight artists to cross the billion-dollar mark. In June, Forbes estimated her net worth at $550 million.

In January 2023, fans protested outside Rolling Stone’s New York offices when she was left off the magazine’s list of “200 Greatest Singers of All Time,” which ran the gamut from Frank Sinatra to SZA.

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