Celine Dion Delivers Tearful Speech on Opening Night of Paris Residency: ‘I Had Promised Myself Not to Cry’

Celine Dion shed tears as she kicked off her eagerly anticipated 16-date residency tonight at Plenitude Arena on the outskirts of Paris, marking her first major series of live shows since stepping away from the spotlight in 2022.

“I had promised myself not to cry,” Dion told thousands of adoring fans in the opening moments of her show, which lasted over two hours and twenty minutes and featured all of her greatest hits, including “The Power of Love,” “Because You Loved Me,” “Pour que tu m’aimes encore,” “All By Myself,” “I’m Alive” and “My Heart Will Go On.” “But I’m so happy to see you all. I missed you. I’m going to sing like you without crying.”

After delivering her first song of the show, “On ne change pas” (“We don’t change”), she said, “Here we are… I’m standing on stage in this city that I love so much, thanks to your support and your love.”

“I have to admit, though, that the road was rocky. The journey was longer than expected, with unplanned stops along the way. But I hung in there. A faint ray of light in the distance, deep in the mountains. I believed in it. And here it is. The sun — the sun is here. The sun, right in front of me,” said Dion, who wore her hair in a sleek, low bun reminiscent of a ballet dancer and was dressed in a Gothic-looking black strapless dress with a corset-like bodice and a layered tulle skirt. It was one of the many outfits she wore through the performance. At one point, she wore a flamboyant pink feathered cape as she performed “Ebben? Ne andrò lontana,” the famous aria from Alfredo Catalani’s opera “La Wally,” made famous by Maria Callas, among others.

“I made a promise to be back on stage. So here I am, singing for you and singing for me, singing live! Thank you so very much for your support, your patience and if I may say so, I am everything I am because you loved me,” she then said in English.

She had previously made her stage return singing Edith Piaf’s “Hymne A L’Amour” by the Eiffel Tower at the 2024 Paris Olympics opening ceremony.

The concert had a spiritual feel, with visual interludes steeped in biblical imagery alluding to a pilgrimage. One of the clips showed Dion wandering through vast desert landscapes, dwarfed by sand, stone and towering shadows. In another prerecorded sequence, the gospel singers, dressed in robes, appeared on distant horizons in the desert and entered the stage to sing alongside Dion, who alone stood on a cliff surrounded by a halo. The set design was highly cinematic, with a monumental staircase sweeping up one side and a moon dominating the stage, while the backdrop appeared to have a stark, almost brutalist gray texture.

Speaking of the uphill battle she waged with her health, Dion said, “By living with it day in and day out, I’ve come to terms with it. And I’ve decided to make it my reason for living.”

She continued, “But look around here — all around you, right here in this room — we don’t know what the person next to us is going through. There are people going through hardships, grief and sorrow. There are people radiating energy and joy. So let’s take that energy and share it. That’s what music is for. Tonight, we’ll sing, we’ll dance and we’ll celebrate.”

During her final words of the night, Dion paid tribute to her “amazing team.” “There are hundreds of people you can’t see — behind the scenes, on the sides, everywhere. Thank you all, because we put this show together.” She then thanked the overjoyed crowd. “And to you all, I love you. Be careful. Take good care of yourselves. I’m so happy to be here. Thank you for accepting my invitation. I love you, my darlings.”

Dion’s arrival in Paris two weeks ago has dominated headlines and sparked a frenzy on social media and in the streets of the French capital. The metro station near the concert venue has also been renamed “Celine” and has been decorated with some of her most famous lyrics. Fans from every corner of the world have been camping in front of the Royal Monceau hotel behind security barriers, singing her most popular songs every time she comes out. Clips of Dion engaging with fans, singing a cappella with them and hitting a few dance moves in front of the Parisian palace have gone viral.

Not all of those hardcore fans will make it to the Paris concerts, however. Some may be turned away if they unknowingly bought fake tickets from the more than 200 fraudulent websites and social media accounts that popped up right when presale tickets went on sale in April, according to the Associated Press, which quoted Group-IB, a Singapore-based cybersecurity firm.

Her comeback isn’t just being eagerly anticipated by fans — it’s also being touted as a potential lifeline for France’s state coffers heading into 2027. The French newspaper Liberation dedicated the cover of its weekend edition to Dion’s residency, featuring a picture of the singer making a prayer-like gesture, looking upward, with a bright halo of light behind her, and a headline that reads, “Celine Dion — is she going to save the 2027 budget?” Her Paris concerts could indeed generate €1 billion in economic impact for France, that’s four times more than what Beyoncé’s Paris concerts in June 2025 brought and roughly a fifth of what the entire Paris 2024 Olympics generated, according to French radio Europe 1.

More than 33,000 people were expected at the Plenitude Arena. More than half of her set list is expected to be from her French repertoire, mainly songs penned and composed by Jean-Jacques Goldman, including “J’irai où tu iras” and the aforementioned “Pour que tu m’aimes encore.”

An estimated nine million people signed up for advance tickets for the shows after Dion announced her concert comeback on March 30, her birthday, during a glamorous bash in front of the Eiffel Tower, which was illuminated in tribute, with a choreographed light show set to Dion’s greatest hits. (Dion didn’t attend the event, but delivered a message on video.)

Dion’s Paris concerts were originally scheduled for 2020 at Paris La Defense Arena as part of her Courage World Tour, but were postponed due to the pandemic and then delayed again due to her health issues. In 2022, Dion was diagnosed with Stiff Person Syndrome (SPS), a rare neurological and autoimmune disorder that causes muscular stiffness, inhibiting the ability to walk and sing. Her fans lost hope that she would ever come back after seeing Dion struggle with this illness in the 2024 documentary “I Am: Celine Dion,” directed by Irene Taylor.