MONTREAL — It was a Friday night, and hundreds of revelers were dancing and singing “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” at a sold-out Celine Dion tribute party. A man posed in a homemade version of the gold headpiece of singed peacock feathers that Dion wore to the 2019 Met Gala.
“In an age of arrogant stars, she is always authentic,” gushed the poser, Simon Venne, a 38-year-old hairstylist. “She is everything to us, a source of pride, our queen.”
If there was ever a feeling that Quebec, the French-speaking province where Dion was born, had conflicted feelings about her rise to global stardom, it has been dispelled. She now occupies an exalted space, experiencing a cultural renaissance as Quebec’s younger generation has embraced her: Radio Canada, the national French-language broadcaster, takes a look at her life in a podcast whose title translates as “Celine: She’s the One! the boss!”; a recent docuseries titled “It’s Cool to Like Celine Dion” explored her appeal among millennials, and Celine Dion drag shows have been on the rise.
Dion’s recent announcement that she suffers from a rare neurological condition called stiff person syndrome was met with a rapture. Both François Legault, the Prime Minister of Quebec, and the leader of a party that advocates Quebec’s independence from Canada expressed sympathy for the 54-year-old Dion. A headline in Le Devoir, an influential newspaper, called her “Celine, Queen of Quebecers.” Dion, the newspaper noted, had achieved the status of an untouchable icon after years of being criticized.
“It’s like hearing that your aunt is sick,” Venne said.
The reaction—25 years after “Titanic,” the blockbuster that made Dion’s bombastic, exuberant song “My Heart Will Go On” ubiquitous—shows just how much Celine’s fan base and ideas about Québecois identity have evolved .
During a visit to Celine Dion Boulevard in Charlemagne, the working-class town outside Montreal where Dion was born, a group of 20-somethings said it was no longer shameful that they liked her music.
“Being stuck at home during the pandemic made people nostalgic for the past,” said Gabriel Guénette, a 26-year-old college student, explaining why he and his friends sang “The Power of Love” at karaoke nights.
Older Charlemagne residents still refer to her as “our little Celine” and remember her as a shy teenager who performed French ballads at her family’s restaurant. The younger residents grew up singing her songs.
In Quebec, a province of 8.5 million people, Dion has been polarizing at times. Some saw in her working-class family, her flashy attire and broken English an old Quebec they’d rather forget. Some considered it cheesy. And singing in English has, at times, been an affront to French-speaking nationalists. But when Dion thanked the audience with a “Merci!” at the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics after singing “The Power of the Dream,” she echoed.
The fascination with Dion lives on in part because of her Cinderella story. She was the youngest of 14 children and her first bed was a box. At age 12, she co-wrote her first song, with help from her mother and her brother Jacques. Her brother Michel sent a demo tape to businessman René Angélil, who became her manager and later her husband. Dion disappeared for 18 months in 1986 to study English, get veneers on her teeth, and take singing and dancing lessons. She was born a star.
When Angélil died in 2016, his funeral was televised on CBC, the national broadcaster. Dion, in a black veil, stood by her coffin, greeting the dignitaries and the public.
Since then, she has reshaped her image for the Instagram age. An appearance from Las Vegas at James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke, during which she sang “My Heart Will Go On” in front of a replica of the Titanic’s bow in the Bellagio Hotel fountain, showed off the people who had mocked her. who also knew how to laugh at herself.
Mario Bennett, 36, who works in a concert hall, began covering every inch of his small Montreal apartment with Celine Dion memorabilia at the start of the pandemic.
He said that throughout his life, Dion’s powerful voice had been a call to dream big: “She makes me feel like anything is possible.”
By: DAN BILEFSKY
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6509175, IMPORTING DATE: 2022-12-27 21:50:07
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