Celine Dion

[yetty]

Celine Dion received a royal welcome Wednesday that would have made The King envious.
Caesars Palace greeted the Canadian superstar with an elaborate homecoming that raised the bar in a city known for grand gestures.
With centurions flanking Caesar and his royal court, the "Overture from Ben Hur" played as Dion's caravan arrived at the front entrance around 7 p.m.
About 500 to 600 people cheered and chanted "Welcome Home Celine" as Dion and her husband/manager, Rene Angelil, each carrying one of their 5-month-old twin boys, walked up a red carpet strewn with red rose petals.
Their 10-year-old son, Rene-Charles, carried a bouquet of roses.
Among the throng: about 200 Caesars Palace employees, half of them Colosseum ushers, including 86-year-old Dorothy Brooks, one of the original ushers when Dion opened a record-breaking run at Caesars Palace almost eight years ago.
Dion thanked the crowd, saying she felt "wanted and loved."
With Las Vegas still in the grip of its worst recession, Dion's three-year engagement here is widely viewed as a much-needed spark.
"It is as monumental as the impact of the Rat Pack and Elvis," said John Meglen, president of AEG Live, the entertainment giant that built The Colosseum to woo Dion to Caesars Palace.
He said her phenomenal numbers -- almost 54 sold-out Colosseum crowds already and with sales at 20 percent ahead of her previous Caesars run "A New Day" -- prove she's still in a league of her own.
"She's coming back when we need her the most," he said.
Dion's queen-for-a-day odyssey included a taping of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" in Chicago that ended with the announcement: "You're going to Vegas!" Winfrey told the audience.
Source (http://www.lvrj.com/news/dawn-of-a-new-day-for-las-vegas-116388104.html?ref=104)

And video (http://multivu.prnewswire.com/mnr/celineinvegas/48708/)

:peace:

[Wayne]

Thanks for posting! :shocked: She really is a legend, she's changing the face of Vegas AGAIN.

[Davidkrobinson]

I love her! I dress like her, i want to meet her. I sometimes like to imagine i am her! weird i know but im obsessed!!

[Wayne]

I love her! I dress like her, i want to meet her. I sometimes like to imagine i am her! weird i know but im obsessed!!

LMAO. Great first post David, welcome to Fanny Edge!

[yetty]

There is a lot of nice reading these days about Celine:legend:

Ken (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0251368/)[GRAMMY Awards Producer and director of Celine´s new show] told me: “It’s not enough to say this will be Celine at her most sophisticated. She will also be at her most intimate. There will be no barriers. I know she will be singing ‘Smile’ in the tribute at the Oscars soon, but don’t know yet if that will be in our final shows here. She will sing Billy Joel’s ‘Lullaby,’ which she sang on Oprah. I introduced her to that song and have yet to see her sing it at every one of our rehearsals without her crying. She really sings that to the new twins. Without doubt, every time she sings ‘Lullaby,’ it’s the most emotional experience of my life -- and I’ve had a very full life with every superstar imaginable.”

John [president of AEG Live] had the last word: “Celine has never been better. She’s at the very best place in her entire life. She wanted to come home to Vegas and perform the new show. She is beyond excited about it. She can’t wait for it to get started.
“It’s the best work she’s ever done in this already extraordinary life she has achieved. There’s no one else like her in the world today. What Elvis and The Rat Pack once did for Vegas, she will do bigger by tenfold.”
Source (http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/blogs/luxe-life/2011/feb/17/celine-dion-i-feel-wanted-and-loved-and-there-noth/)

[rayoflight91]

Celine in Vegas earlier on:




The media attention was insane! :o She looks AMAZING!
Her boobs... :shocked:

[HeatSeeker]

Her boobs... :shocked:

Probably swollen from breastfeeding :P

[Wayne]

^ I bet Rene's happy! :lol:

[Nici]

Woooooop the queen is returning <3 bout time too! Hopefully news about her new albums will surface soon hopefully can't wait for Vegas either I'm seeing three shows :-)

[Wayne]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7lLQO1wXFs&feature=player_embedded

OMG, I had a few tears! Her voice is IMMACULATE, very 2002-2003 ish! Better than I ever expected it to be. So proud of Celine <3

[Wayne]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJFUbSvmGRA&feature=channel

[HeatSeeker]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7lLQO1wXFs&feature=player_embedded

OMG, I had a few tears! Her voice is IMMACULATE, very 2002-2003 ish! Better than I ever expected it to be. So proud of Celine <3

Is this recent? She sounded lovely :) And it's cool that she's the celebrity who's been on Oprah the most times, never would have guessed lol.

[Wayne]

Yeah, it was taped about 2 weeks ago! :)

[Wayne]

At the oscars:

http://s3.amazonaws.com/twitpic/photos/full/249494192.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=0ZRYP5X5F6FSMBCCSE82&Expires=1298855384&Signature=wk0RrBLgjniNy7l9AYPUyp09CuI%3D

[HeatSeeker]

^ Isn't showing up. I hope she didn't perform another soft ballad...

[Wayne]

Click:

http://ow.ly/i/8Dho/original

She's performing Smile in tribute to those stars that have died over the last 12 months

[Wayne]

I'm starting to like the Daily Mail once more! Its one of the UK's biggest tabloids and used to be really horrible to Celine! However, something happened over the last three years, and they seem to love her now :D

They had this to say about her:


Even more remarkable was singer Celine Dion's svelte physique tonight.

Hugged in a Giorgio Armani Privé gown she looked incredibly slim after giving birth to twins Eddy and Nelson just four months ago.

Accompanied by her husband of 16 years, Rene Angelil, the 42-year-old was glowing and gorgeous.

Celine and her husband fought for years to have a family. The singer underwent IVF to conceive her first son Rene Charles, 9, then a further six failed attempts before finally falling pregnant with triplets.

But one baby did not survive, dying early in pregnancy

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/02/28/article-1361326-0D64D4D1000005DC-517_196x591.jpg
Yummy mummies: Penelope, Amy and Celine all looked incredible in their designer dresses at the awards

Her performance:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kct3NY1cSGU

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMjQ3MTUyMjQ4.html

[Nici]

Omg Celine was on top form for the oscars <3

[Wayne]

^ I know! :D She was amazing!

[Wayne]

LAS VEGAS — The woman in the gray sweats, white sneakers and no makeup is amped

"Follow me," Celine Dion says.

Like a shot, she exits her dressing room and makes for The Colosseum, the 4,000-seat venue that Caesars Palace built for Dion in 2003.

But following Dion, 42, is not easy. Although just four months ago she delivered twins Nelson and Eddy, today the lithe Canadian siren bolts up backstage stairs two at a time. During rehearsal, she stalks the stage like a caged tiger, eyes narrowed as she scats through the Ella Fitzgerald classic You'll Have to Swing It (Mr. Paganini).

When she jogs in place like a boxer during a run-through of a James Bond theme-song medley, the symbolism is hard to misread. Dion isn't here to perform. She's here to kill it. Again.

On Tuesday, Dion unveils Celine, a new show at the very venue where, in 2007, she performed the last of more than 700 sold-out performances of A New Day. That Cirque du Soleil-inspired extravagance grossed $400 million and revived the Las Vegas residency pioneered by Elvis Presley in the '70s. Big one-named acts quickly followed Dion's lead, among them Cher, Bette and Elton.

"The first time, it was against all odds, everyone thought we would sink," Dion says in lightly accented English just after the night's rehearsal performance before a non-paying audience of casino employees. "But we showed them wrong."

This time around, Dion seems eager to demonstrate that she can still be a force in live entertainment while being a new mother. "With Rene-Charles (Dion's first child), I wanted to quit singing, honestly. But now I know what it is to be a mother, and I see that I can have it all."

Dion takes evident pride in being a trailblazer. Which is possibly why Celine is not a new New Day.

Where that show featured a singer in a swirl of 40 dancers, this one is just Dion, albeit with 31 musicians. In many ways, Celine is a throwback to the classic Vegas formula established by Presley and Frank Sinatra. The star belts out signature tunes mixed with a little banter, and after a breezy 90 minutes, visitors are back gambling with smiles on their faces.

Vegas is betting on Celine.

"Maybe it was a coincidence that the first time Celine was here, Vegas was booming, but regardless, there's now a hope that maybe she can bring back the way it was (before the recession)," says Anthony Curtis, president of LasVegasAdvisor.com, which provides subscribers with Strip tips and updates.

Curtis says Dion's core fan base — "the Titanic crowd" — represents "that midlevel gambler whose return could help make up for the crowds we've lost since the economy went bad."

Caesars Palace president Gary Selesner says Dion's timing "is impeccable. She's back with some improving trends including a 30% increase in our convention business over last year."

He adds that tickets for Dion's new show, $55 to $250, are selling out "at a faster pace than her last one. A lot of buyers are from core markets like California and New York. But there are a lot of Canadians and even people saying they're coming from Indonesia, China and the Middle East just to see this new show."

Dion long ago proved she's "the perfect act for a casino, which wants the entertainment to serve as a lure for the gambling," says Gary Bongiovanni, editor of Pollstar, which tracks the concert industry.

"The demographic she attracts is fairly wide, and not a lot of acts can pull that way," Bongiovanni says. "Look, she pioneered this thing. The only thing that's changed since she was in Vegas last is the economy."

'She is a very lucky person'

Talk of Dion saving Vegas brings a smile to the face of Rene Angelil, 69, her husband and manager.

"It's good to be optimistic, but Celine doesn't perform miracles," he says. "That said, she is a very lucky person. On the world tour we did (after A New Day), it somehow seemed to stop raining every time she was about to do a stadium show. So maybe she'll bring some luck to this city."

Whatever Celine proves to be, it can't repeat the Guinness-like performance of A New Day.

For starters, Dion will perform only about 70 shows a year — half the pace of A New Day— and do so in bursts that are staggered around the school schedule of her 10-year-old son. That means, apart from this opening mid-March to early-April run, mostly summer dates with scattered holidays, since the family calls Jupiter Island, Fla., home when they're not in Nevada.

For Dion, who went through six in-vitro fertilization attempts over two years before becoming pregnant with twins, motherhood now trumps showbiz.

"Performing as a mom is what I enjoy most," she says. "Music is a part of me, sure. But now I don't have to choose between the two. The way I see it, I do what I love, and I get paid for it. But it's not something important. You can't take yourself too seriously."

What grounds her is a private lifestyle that is the "opposite of the spotlight on the stage," Dion says. So, setting aside the jets and five-acre beachside mansion in Florida, what does that mean?

"Party time for me is on stage. So when I'm off it, I like to be in my PJs and sip my coffee for four hours, maybe swim with the kids. And I love watching old game shows." She pauses for some tea with honey. "I've been doing this (life of a performer) since I was 12. It's a discipline by now. But one day, it'd be nice to be normal."

Dion quickly defines what a life without the rigors of performances and interviews would mean. "I'd love to be a hostess, and maybe invite people over and cook for them, c'est bien, no?" she says with a smile. "I'd love to rent a yacht with my family and sail the Mediterranean, going wherever we felt like.

"I'd love to eat more good wine and cheese and not worry about what that might do to my sinuses or my head. I'd love to learn to read and write music. Speak Italian and maybe Chinese. Maybe get an apartment in Paris and live there. And I still want to act. I want to play Maria Callas. Maybe one day I'll hear, 'And the Oscar goes to ...' "

Thigh-slapping encouraged

These sound distinctly like the daydreams of someone who can't quite realize any of them, yet.

Right now, the show must go on. And mere days from the premiere, there's still a lot of tinkering going on. The show's producer, longtime Grammy Awards architect Ken Ehrlich, confers with Angelil during rehearsal about cutting a few numbers.

"The show can't run over 95 minutes," Angelil says. Ehrlich nods as Dion, on stage, asks her musical director to try to get "more sizzle" into Diamonds Are Forever.

Ehrlich helped shape the show's set list, which includes intriguing choices such as Billy Joel's Lullabye and Jacques Brel's Ne Me Quitte Pas, which Dion sings in French.

"I'm hoping to be able to grow her fan base a bit," says Ehrlich, whose latest piece of producing wizardry was getting Mick Jagger to perform with Raphael Saadiq on last month's Grammys telecast. "You have to do the hits, of course, but there's an opportunity to really showcase that instrument of hers."

Ehrlich says one of the things he admires most about Dion is "her ability to make you feel like she's singing to you. Springsteen can do it. So can Bono. But not everyone. Sometimes, there's been a tendency not to regard her as a serious artist. But she's a remarkable talent."

What's apparent just from watching Dion rehearse is an almost rookie-like dedication to preparation. Whether choosing which sounds to scat with, or telling her drummer how she wants the snare to sound, Dion is all about the details. Angelil says his wife rehearsed before each of the 700-plus performances of A New Day. "At the end, she certainly didn't have to, but she did," he says.

Though Dion is now at a point in her career where it might even be enough to belt out My Heart Will Go On and call it a night, she isn't aiming for applause. She's looking for rapture.

"Celine wants everyone to walk out and say" — here Ehrlich slaps his thigh — 'That's the best damn show I've ever seen.' "

After the night's rehearsal performance, which started 45 minutes late because of a technical glitch with the sound, Dion confesses she remains addicted to performing.

"I don't need to do it, but I love to do it," she says. "I'm sure my fans will let me know when they've had enough. And then maybe I'll go play some small clubs for those who still want to see me."

She says that. But she can't really believe it.

"I feel like wine that's gotten better with age," Dion says. "I know I'm not going to be able to sing like this forever. But as long as I can, I will."

:D

[Wayne]

Rene confirmed a new French album will be released before the end of the year, and that we can expect a new English album in 2012, at the earliest! Bittersweet, but I'm excited for new French music as it will include Luc Plamondon! :cheer:

[IceAngel]

That is great news :) As I said on the other forum as well, I hope this sells more than D'elles, with help from the Xmas season etc

[Wayne]

Well D'elles was her first French language album in a long time and she heavily promoted it with a television special, and loads of other TV spots. I'd love for this to sell as much as D'elles (any more would be incredible) - D'elles shipped around 800,000 copies worldwide (including roughly 280k in France and over 200k in Canada), also selling well in Belgium, Africa and Switzerland.

Her profile has sadly diminished in France, she's gone from being the biggest-selling act in the country to being a good-selling international act. Part of this is down to her poor enunciation when singing in French

[HeatSeeker]

Well D'elles was her first French language album in a long time and she heavily promoted it with a television special, and loads of other TV spots. I'd love for this to sell as much as D'elles (any more would be incredible) - D'elles shipped around 800,000 copies worldwide (including roughly 280k in France and over 200k in Canada), also selling well in Belgium, Africa and Switzerland.

Her profile has sadly diminished in France, she's gone from being the biggest-selling act in the country to being a good-selling international act. Part of this is down to her poor enunciation when singing in French

Lol! But isn't French her first language? I mean her English enunciation isn't perfect either, so what language does she sing in well? :lol:

[IceAngel]

She sounds great to me in French! I do detect some differences in the enunciation when compared to French singers. The French spoken in Canada is so much different though so people shouldn't really blame her. But anyway, I thought D'elles was much more of a flop there, almost 300k in France is not bad at all, a far cry from her previous million and multi million sellers though..

[HeatSeeker]

Oh I see, Wayne means that her French enunciation isn't that great because she has a Canadian-French accent which is different.

[IceAngel]

Oh I see, Wayne means that her French enunciation isn't that great because she has a Canadian-French accent which is different.

Exactly! French is definitely her mother language. She became very proficient in English only at the beginning of her career I think, as she needed to penetrate the English speaking market!

[Wayne]

Yeah, with regards to her enunciation; many of her biggest fans hated D'elles primarily because of how her voice sounded on the record - it was very nasally, and she wasn't enunciating certain letters

[Wayne]

Rich Vegas, Poor Vegas

http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/242213/Cline+Dion.jpg

Sin City has no jobs, and the newly homeless are living in drainage pipes. But it also has its biggest act since Elvis.

As another desert afternoon fades to night, an unusual throng is building at Las Vegas’s Caesars Palace, vibrating the plaster columns of the porte-cochère. There are white-haired executives flanked by publicity personnel; camera-toting tourists jostling with hundreds of off-duty hotel employees; and, naturally, a man dressed as Caesar himself, complete with a phalanx of rent-a-centurions decked in bronze and red feathers. At last, a black Escalade draws up, and Celine Dion, the shimmering French-Canadian headliner, steps onto a rose-strewn red carpet. “Welcome home, Celine!” the hoi polloi yell, as the overture from Ben-Hur erupts from hidden speakers.

“It doesn’t feel like I’ve left,” Celine says, recalling her recent neon-lit Vegas homecoming.

But the view from the red carpet can be deceptive. For in the three years since she departed Caesars Palace, Vegas collapsed. Sky-high foreclosures and epic layoffs torched the working-class dreams of the men and women who create the illusion that is Celine’s Las Vegas: the cocktail waitresses in their Romanesque miniskirts, the towel boys who work the Bacchus pools, the cooks at Neros Steakhouse. The megaresorts along the Strip recently posted an unprecedented two-year loss—with a total bleed north of $6 billion—and the usual gap between the city’s glamour and grit is now wider than at any point in Las Vegas history. Official unemployment is near 14 percent, the nation’s worst rate among big cities, and when you factor in those who have lost hours or dropped out of the labor force altogether, actual joblessness is a Libya-like 26 percent, according to Stephen Brown, the director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “Could things actually look worse?” Brown asked during a speech to business leaders this winter. “The answer is no.”

All of which helps explain why Celine has been cast as a savior as much as a star. “Prepare for the Second Coming” implored a column in the Las Vegas Sun, dividing the city’s recent history into B.C. and A.C. (for exactly the reason you think). It’s the “Dawn of a New Day,” promised a more sober piece in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, riffing on the title of Dion’s last Vegas show, A New Day. “Can a Singular ‘Celine’ Revive Las Vegas?” queried USA Today, before engaging the president of Caesars Palace on why, exactly, the answer is yes.

Certainly Celine has been good for Caesars, and Caesars has been good for Celine—paying her a reported $100 million for 210 shows over the next three years. During her prior run, from 2003 to 2007, Dion sold out more than 700 consecutive performances, smashing local records for total audience (nearly 3 million), and bringing in more than $400 million at the box office, more greenbacks than the Rat Pack, Liberace, and Elvis combined. This time around, she’s being touted as a one-woman stimulus bill—worth at least $114 million a year and thousands of jobs, according to UNLV. But in an $18 billion–dollar economy—one so sluggish it was recently ranked among the five worst in the world—can Celine’s return really have an impact? “We are not adjusting our forecast,” says Michael Lawton, a senior analyst for Nevada’s Gaming Control Board, who notes that the Celine effect is basically just replacing the Cher effect from a season ago.

Of course, to presume that a single performer—even one of Dion’s stature—could help Vegas get rich quick is a sucker’s bet. But then, that’s what Vegas has always been about.

A crowd of 4,200 fans has packed into the Colosseum at Caesars Palace to get a first look at Celine’s new show. As she takes the stage in her sparkling ivory Armani Privé gown, the audience leaps to its feet. Several fans sob uncontrollably, and the singer fights tears of her own. “I’m so excited to be back in this beautiful theater,” she exclaims as she scans the biggest showroom in Vegas, which was built for her in 2003. “I got to tell you, this is a dream come true for a singer.”

Backed by a 31-piece orchestra that brings to mind Vegas’s Rat Pack glory days, Dion launches into a taut 90-minute cycle of her hits (“My Heart Will Go On,” “Beauty and the Beast”) and borrowed classics (from Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror” to the Bond theme song “Goldfinger”). For Dion fans, it’s an almost-religious experience, leavened with personal anecdotes and at-home photos with the diva, who gave birth to twins four months ago. “I gained more than 60 pounds,” Dion later says backstage, lounging on a couch in her dressing room and sipping a cup of tea. “When you work hard and breast-feed, it gives you your shape back.”

Dion has an endearing way of making her fairy-tale life in Vegas seem ordinary, which is part of the draw. “I know it sounds strange,” she says. “We have an extravagant life, but we’re normal people.” The family’s house, on a golf course 30 miles from the Strip, is a relatively modest four-bedroom affair (although it’s worth noting that they have two other homes, including a $20 million spread in Florida with its own water park, and Dion will be spending only part of her time in Vegas). All the same, Dion says she came here in the first place because she wanted to put down roots, back when her son Rene-Charles—known as “R.C.” and now 10—was an infant. “I don’t want my kids to live in my dressing room,” she says. “I want [R.C.] to go outside. I want him to play baseball.” R.C. has joined the Little League team and bowls near the casino. And Dion turned to the local church when it was time to baptize Eddy (named for the French songwriter who penned her first five albums) and Nelson (as in Mandela).

One thing Celine doesn’t do like a local is gamble—although her husband Rene Angelil moonlights as a professional poker player and has already taught RC how to play. (“I’m ashamed to say that,” Angelil says.) He won $1.6 million at a tournament just before the couple left Sin City in 2007. “I wasn’t the one who brought my husband here,” Dion quips backstage. “He’s been coming since before I was born. I decide everything in our private life, but in show business, he’s the boss.” After discovering Celine in 1981, Angelil mortgaged his home to produce her first record. “Sometimes when you gamble, you get up from the table with a fortune,” he explains. “That’s what happened with Celine in my life.”

What does Dion make of all the talk that she will bring fortune back to Las Vegas? “It’s very touching for me to hear this,” she says. “I think it’s just a coincidence. When we ended the show, the economy just went,” she gestures to the floor and makes the sound of a plane nose-diving.

Few people have witnessed the human toll more closely than Sgt. Patrick Geary and his colleague, Dep. Kristy Henderson in the Las Vegas Constable’s Office. They are responsible for delivering the paperwork of this apocalypse: wage garnishments, foreclosure and eviction notices, and, ultimately, court-ordered lockouts. Paid by debt collectors on a per-action basis—$42 for an eviction, for example—Geary, who began plying his trade in 2007, has been raking in around $80,000 a year. Henderson is a charmer, with blonde hair, pink painted nails and gold-rimmed aviator sunglasses, but she is a messenger of doom for many employees of the Strip’s biggest properties: the MGM resorts, Caesars, the Venetian. These days, the companies often tell Henderson that the person she’s looking for no longer works for them. It’s no surprise. Three major casinos have gone bankrupt, and at least six multibillion-dollar resort and condo projects stand idle, monuments to the wild optimism of just a couple years past.

At the south end of the Strip, near the iconic “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign, a hidden concrete path leads into a 500-mile warren of wet, trash-strewn drainage pipes that function as an underground shelter for hundreds of the city’s most downtrodden. Several have been laid off from the same well-paid, benefits-packed service jobs that give Vegas its rep as a working-class paradise. The pipes are one of the few places police and hotel security don’t bother to tread, and since the recession, they’ve become increasingly populated, according to Matthew O’Brien, author of a 2007 book about the tunnels, Beneath the Neon.

Life here is spare and dangerous. Aside from floods that can fill the space in minutes, there is ever-present crime. Jody Alger, 48, an unemployed casino waitress, guards her tunnel with a BB gun. Another camp has two makeshift barricades at its entrance; inside, its 32-year-old inhabitant huddles on an old bed with a flashlight strapped to his head. In a nearby tunnel, John Tondee sleeps on a sagging leather couch that he found in a Dumpster. His clothes are in a messy pile, and his entertainment is a guitar with a broken string, which he uses for playing country gospel. “I’m at the point of coming out of here,” he says. “I’ve had enough.” Tondee says he’s a former maintenance worker who lost his job a year ago and couldn’t afford to pay the $675 in rent. “I’ll do whatever it takes to survive,” he says. “I’ll go around and wash windows.” At night, he used to dress in drag and walk down the Strip. But someone came into the tunnel and stole his 16 wigs. Now he has only one head of fake black curls left.

Mayor Oscar Goodman doesn’t seem unduly worried about the underlying desperation in Las Vegas. The politician, a self-described former mob lawyer who now bills himself as “The Happiest Mayor of the Greatest City in the World,” brims with optimism about the town’s prospects. As he explained recently in his office, which is stuffed with celebrity photo ops and knickknacks from nearly 12 years in the bully pulpit, “I think we’re in good shape…I have no concerns.” He slaps smiley faces over every dire statistic associated with his town, from the loss of 140,000 jobs (“I have no doubt they’ll be back”) to the 2 million–person decline in annual visitors (“Give them time to buy a ticket!”).

Even so, the mayor is as happy as anyone to see Celine return—maybe even happier. As he later confides: “I was just praying that she would come back. Thank God she did.”

In the minutes after Dion’s first preview performance, the cash registers at the Colosseum gift shop are mobbed. Fans scoop up $65 sparkling Celine flip-flops, $495 champagne glasses, a $3,000 crystal purse designed by Judith Leiber. “The most popular shirt we have is ‘I Love Celine Dion, and Celine Dion Loves Me,’ ” says Maryann Louder, Caesars’ supervisor for entertainment retail, who sings along to Dion’s tunes in the store. “We also have it in French.” It’s not only about pajamas and mugs—Celine’s branding power reaches to the sky. Last month, Air Canada announced expanded service along its Quebec to Las Vegas route to accommodate Dion’s rabid hometown fans, a quarter million of whom turned out for one of her first post-Vegas concerts in 2008.

Dion has been a star in Canada since she was 13. She had four hit French-language albums by age 16, when she saw Michael Jackson on TV and decided to learn English to emulate her idol. Ballads like “The Power of Love” and “Because You Loved Me” propelled her career, and Dion has sold 215 million albums worldwide. She is especially popular overseas—a big selling point for Vegas executives looking to bring in high rollers from Asia and elsewhere. “Our very best customers are planning trips to see Celine,” says Caesars president Gary Selesner. “You can go in any bar anywhere in the world—Tanzania, Shanghai—and that song [‘My Heart Will Go On’] will be playing.”

Before Dion’s arrival in 2003, Sin City’s musical identity was still tied to Liberace, Elvis impersonators, and, at best, a mustachioed Wayne Newton. But Dion has made Vegas safe again for big-name talent of a certain age. Cher and Bette Midler followed her at the Colosseum, and Shania Twain is in talks to begin her own engagement in the house that Celine built. Sitting backstage in an area designed for a Lion King–sized cast, Barry Manilow, a self-described “guy in front of a band,” says Dion helped make the Strip palatable for a singer of his stature. “She changed the perception of performers here,” says the 67-year-old crooner, who’s about to release his first album of new songs in a decade, 15 Minutes. In 2009, he decamped from the frescoed, pink penthouse he occupied at the Las Vegas Hilton when he first started playing the city in 2005, to a more subdued condo near his new show at the Paris Las Vegas hotel-casino. (Unlike Celine, the star prefers not to live in a city where a volcano erupts every hour, so he commutes for his shows from that other Rat Pack oasis, Palm Springs.) Like Dion, Manilow has proven to be a kind of mini-stimulus program for Las Vegas, funneling an estimated $60 million a year into the economy. But he says his view from the stage hasn’t changed during the city’s doldrums. “We’ve been doing really good business,” Manilow says. “It hasn’t gone downhill for me.”

For those celebrities who live here full time, the devastation is a bit more noticeable. Marie Osmond, who performs at the Flamingo with her brother Donny, describes what it was like trick-or-treating last Halloween. “All the homes were empty,” says the Dancing With the Stars veteran, who lives in a posh gated suburb. “You go up to them and there’s nobody there, there’s a [foreclosure] sign in the window. Even in our neighborhood.”

The illusionist Criss Angel says he knew the recession was bad when he saw hotel guests bringing their own six-packs from the gas station down the street. Late last year, Angel launched a powerfully rebuilt show at the pyramid-shaped Luxor (his prior act debuted to poisonous reviews in 2008) and is on track to pump an estimated $150 million a year into the local economy (thanks to four times as many shows as Celine and Barry). “I’m the face of the Luxor,” says Angel, who spends a fair amount of his time between shows in the “Black Room”—his custom-built backstage lounge replete with leather-covered walls and a 26-head marble shower that could accommodate most of Cirque du Soleil. Angel helped bring his ex-girlfriend Holly Madison to Sin City, straight from Hugh Hefner’s mansion. She now headlines in Peepshow, a recession-proof topless musical (don’t even ask about the plot), and stars in an E! Network reality show from the Strip called Holly’s World. When not shimmying at Planet Hollywood, Madison plays in her 5,000-square-foot faux Mediterranean villa, complete with its own backyard water slide. She got a great deal on the place, thanks to the real-estate crash. “I found one that was half price,” she gushes. “I got lucky.”

But no one is as lucky as the diva who will be raking in an estimated half million dollars a show beginning this Tuesday night. “If they ask me to come, it’s because they make money,” Dion says. “How do you think I feel about that? I feel like a winner.” After so much loss, Las Vegas can only pray, “Luck, be a lady tonight.”

SOURCE: NEWSWEEK (http://www.newsweek.com/2011/03/13/rich-vegas-poor-vegas.html)


Probably one of my favourite articles yet! :D

[Wayne]

Ticket sales are so good for the Vegas show that they've had to put next year's tickets on sale early and have had to add an additional 16 shows (an extra 68,000+ tickets!)

[Wayne]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4CmOw6rHbw

She kicked off the show with this! SO MAGICAL!!

[Wayne]

Celine Dion’s show is a masterpiece of majesty, elegance and amazing duets

http://photo.lasvegasweekly.com/img/photos/2011/03/15/CelineDion1_t450.jpg?613272c032846e7268e57ee632edc 6288efb17ce
Editor’s note: The follow review contains spoilers, so continue reading at your own risk.

A magnificent masterpiece! Those are the only words to describe the magical and memorable moment when Celine Dion drops pop princess status and takes on a monarch’s mantle as legendary icon in her new spectacular at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace. The curtains part at the halfway mark of the show to reveal Celine singing at rear center stage after one more of the fantastic music interludes to permit her the seven fabulous designer gown changes. Almost simultaneously, a second Celine appears right in the center of the theater singing, too.

It’s the duet you never ever dreamed could happen. The audience goes into a mesmerized “is it live or recorded” trance. Celine glows with radiance as the new Queen of the Strip and nobly glides slowly down the aisle. Nobody would dare reach out to touch her or interrupt the beauty of her strong, powerful voice. It’s such a reverential and awesome moment that it’s certain to cause spine-tingling and hair-raising experiences for every Colosseum spectator.

The silence is so intense you could hear a pin drop, except for the audible intake of breath as the audience inhales. You suddenly realize the image of Celine onstage is a hologram and a very remarkable, uncanny and extraordinary one. It takes the entire song for heaven-sent Celine to walk down the theater aisle in a bridal white, floor-length, robed gown to reach the stage steps. When she finishes the song and the applause and standing ovation have quieted, Celine breaks the tension beautifully, joking: “You should know how long it took to teach her to get it right!”

With the audience still reeling from that special effect, Celine produces another brilliant surprise, saying that her favorite duet over the years was with superstar singer Stevie Wonder. The curtain lifts on cue to show the pop prince at his piano! It’s the perfect double whammy. His hologram is so real, you’re very hard put to even dare think that it isn’t, as the real Celine and the imaged Stevie sing and chat.

All of that wonder and excitement takes place in just one 10-minute section of the show. Yet the other 85 are just as filled with surprises and effects. It’s way more than the producers ever promised. AEG’s head honcho, producer John Meglen, wasn’t kidding when he told me to wait patiently for the surprises. Director Ken Ehrlich only told me half the story of what magic he was conjuring. It’s the show you never want to end. Or at least have it performed twice nightly so you can sit through it again for another 95 minutes.

Celine has singlehandedly redefined class and elegance in onstage performances. Don’t be disappointed that there’s no over-the-top Las Vegas flying acrobatics, trampoline jumps, outrageous comedy video clips or Cirque du Soleil-like performers dodging firebombs. This is solely Celine, her songs and her music -- all totally pure and infinitely intimate. There is one song with billowing smoke; otherwise, you’ll feel you as if you’re in the recording studio with her or she’s singing to you in your living room.

That intense level of star contact with the audience is awesome and riveting. In the 11 years I have lived in Las Vegas and the 35 before that in New York, I’ve never felt that level of intimacy achieved onstage. Maybe Elvis had a similar spark, but not to this height. Maybe Garth Brooks comes mighty close at Encore Theater at the Wynn. Very few others own that magic to reach this ultimate gold standard. Up close or on the HDTV projection with Celine, you cry, too, as the tears roll down her face with the extraordinary emotion she brings to the lyrics.

Her 31-piece orchestra and band with three backup singers are the platinum-perfect accompaniment on their six-part modular stage for the 22-song set, and all are similar geniuses in their own right. The orchestra is as lush as could be, the band as tight as could be and the singers as balanced as could be. In the choreographed chorale for the Michael Jackson salute, the stage is filled with 30-plus singer finger-clicking in Radio City Music Hall high-kick precision to remind of The King of Pop’s production wizardry. The floating in-and-out stages move silently in an interlocking jigsaw wonder as if they are dancing silently.

The show opens with what us sated Las Vegas showgoers might groan over -- an obligatory video clip. But this is a brilliant edit as you go around the world in 80 seconds with Celine on her most recent global tour. The high-octane video roars along, starting from the finale show at Caesars back on Dec. 15, 2007, and has shots in the limo going back to the family’s home in Lake Las Vegas with young son Rene-Charles asking plaintively that night, “What do we do now? Where do we go now?”

Husband, father and manager Rene Angelil and Celine promise him that they will return one day to Caesars, and with that, the video switches to her arrival here a month ago as the curtain rises to reveal Celine herself now on March 15, 2011. (Celine believes the number 5 is her lucky number and thus everything she does is keyed to a 5.)

In another brief video clip to cover a gown change later in the show, there’s incredibly personal, never-before-seen video portraits at home soon after the successful hospital delivery of twin boys Eddy and Nelson conceived after five failed in-vitro attempts. There’s another precious moment captured with Celine wide awake on their private jet nursing one of the newborn twins and Rene fast asleep with the other twin in the same position.

In the show opener, Celine stands in a shimmering gold and ivory Armani gown at center stage with the world’s largest pure white billowing curtain. It flies away instantly in a split second as if Criss Angel pulled the ultimate Mindfreak vanish. The stage is filled wall to wall with the orchestra, band and three backup singers. It’s the first wow moment of the night.

As she sings the first number with tear-filled eyes, 11 painting-sized video screens drop from the ceiling amid threads of burning candleholders to show how she sung it over the years at different ages. It’s all a very original and dramatic impact, particularly as the orchestra’s six-sectioned platform floats forward to the audience.

Celine, who also wears stunning outfits from Versace, Givenchy, Balmain and Elie Saab, is refreshingly candid talking with the audience at the show’s first possible moment: “This is a dream come true. We are overjoyed at what has happened and that we are back at Caesars. But I am still nervous about it.” And in a reference to Rene’s poker-playing skills at the tables: “It’s an even bigger dream come true for Rene!” Celine admits to gaining 60 pounds while pregnant, but the hard work of the show and the parenting had her back in fine form in no time.

The 42-year-old singer who celebrates her birthday in two weeks said she can’t believe how fast the time has gone since they left and how fast Rene-Charles, now 10, has grown. “Now I have the best of both worlds looking after my four boys (that includes Rene!), being with the family and still performing. This is a gift from heaven,” she said. When she sings “Lullaby” to say goodnight to the babies, she shows the recent Las Vegas baptism of the twins, and everybody agrees with her that “this is the best there is.”

Her voice is sent from the angels. It’s the best it’s ever been since she was 13 and scored with four albums by age 16. The break from performing has made it stronger and more sensational. In the setting of this show, it rings as a crystal clear phenomenon of confidence, poise and power. The music matches Celine’s majesty, too. A classical violinist plays while strolling through the audience. Three amazing cello players rock out on one of the side areas of the stage. The five brass boys onstage step right into the audience while playing. Everybody is having fun, and it adds yet another strategic plus as to why the show is unique and solely about songs and sounds.

Her “You Are the Reason” is sung against one of the most dramatic wall drops of blossoming giant flowers and a staggering chandelier, a genius artistic approach to set decoration. You can’t help be wowed by that, but then Celine does her music tribute to my hero, MI5 super agent James Bond. Now she’s in a black sequined gown for “Goldfinger,” and the mammoth video wall is alive with what must be 200 feet of shattering colorful animation that should start the next 007 movie. Look closely and you’ll spot Rene-Charles as the young secret agent. It’s cutting-edge technology for a total multimedia environment created by Moment Factory of Montreal, who also dealt another winning card with the water screen. Every image, filmed with special cameras or created electronically, seen in The Colosseum was created specifically for the new show.

When she sings “The Music Never Ends,” you want her show to never end. When she sits with a solo guitarist onstage inches from the front rows to sing Janis Ian’s hit “Seventeen” and then goes into “Beauty & the Beast” with Barnev Valsaint, you are in a hypnotic state wondering just how far she can push the buttons of emotion. She answers with the ultimate tearjerker of Ne Me Quitte Pas (Don’t Leave Me) by writer Jacques Brel. The tears pour down her face and that of the audience.

Celine dominates the stage, rules the arena and commands the crowd with “All By Myself” and in more breathtaking moments at centers stage with just a piano and her longtime music director. The superlatives aren’t enough to keep up with this. Celine zips into a gold sequined tuxedo jacket and tight leather pants for her Michael Jackson tribute, saying, “He changed my life. I learned English to sing like him.” For “Man in the Mirror,” she’s backed by an 18-member finger-snapping choir and one closing shot of a smiling Michael in a picture frame.

The finale leads from “River Deep Mountain High” into her final wardrobe change of a green, bare-shouldered turquoise gown as she sings the Titanic love song “My Heart Will Go On.” It’s an appropriate ending. The show is huge, totally terrific and titanic itself. If tonight is the night she decides to say she’s staying longer than planned in Las Vegas, we wouldn’t be at all surprised. Celine reigns triumphant and will continue to do so for the next three years and possibly five. No other words can do the show justice: a magnificent masterpiece.

Welcome back, Celine!

:D

[Wayne]

Celine Dion promises to bring the sparkle back to Las Vegas

As Las Vegas struggles to recover from one of the worst economic slumps of any American city, the is hailing a powerful new weapon in its fightback: Celine Dion

As a place synonymous with extravagance and good fortune, it could be said that Las Vegas was dealt a bad hand when recession struck. But after one of the worst economic slumps of any American city, the so-called Capital of Second Chances is hailing a powerful new weapon in its fightback: Celine Dion.

The French-Canadian singer has been dubbed a "messiah" and the debut of her new show at Caesar's Palace last week treated with all the reverence of the Second Coming for the extraordinary scale of prosperity it promises to restore to the troubled Strip.

"She's been called a 'one-woman economic stimulus package' and I think there's a lot of truth to that. People will come to the city just for her and they will spend money and as a consequence, she has an outsized impact on the economy," said Stephen Brown, director of the Centre for Business and Economic Research in Las Vegas.

"And 'Bigger than Elvis, Sinatra and Liberace put together?'" he added. "Definitely."

He estimates that Dion's show will create up to 7,000 indirect jobs and around $114 million worth of new economic activity in each of the three years for which she has been contracted. Box office takings are over $10 million already for the first month's worth of shows alone.

During her last run in Las Vegas, from 2003 to 2007, every last ticket of every show sold out, accumulating gross profits of $400 million and reaching a total audience of three million. Caesar's built a $95 million, 4,000-seat auditorium especially for her, complete with dazzling stage wizardry and a dehumidifying system to protect her voice from the dry desert heat.

By coincidence, she departed Caesar's in 2007 just before the city's economy collapsed, and is returning to it just as some believe it is poised for potential recovery.

"Las Vegas was caught in the boom and bust that occurred in the US housing market and it was probably more severe here than in any other city in the US," said Dr Brown. As tourism crashed, gaming profits slumped and hotels, casinos and restaurants were forced to lay off staff. Hotels posted record losses of $6 billion for 2010.

"Last year in Las Vegas, unemployment hit 15.7 per cent. And if you look at statistics on people who are considered under-employed - people not in full-time jobs who wish to be, and take the number of people who have dropped out of the labour force but are still living in the area - then you get up to 25 per cent. Even when tourism rose again in 2010, the expenditure per head was still down."

Dion, 42, is the best-selling female artist of all time - hits include the Oscar-winning theme songs from the films Titanic and Beauty and the Beast. She has sold more than 200 million albums worldwide, won more than 1,000 awards and enjoys a deeply loyal fan base. Air Canada has added more flights from Quebec to Las Vegas just to cope with the mass of fans making the pilgrimage from her home province.

Few people are under any illusions that Las Vegas can be single-handedly salvaged by one woman and a microphone. On the same day that her new show opened, the fabled Sahara hotel and casino, one-time favourite of stars including Sinatra, Elvis and the Beatles, and the setting for the movie Ocean's 11, announced that it will close in May, driven to the wall by the recession after 59 years in business.

But economists and business leaders are convinced that she will be a formidable factor in the city's financial rejuvenation; tourism, for example, is expected to rise by 3.1 per cent in 2011 - equating to around one million more visitors - with Dion's comeback accounting for a significant part of the surge. Hotel occupancy rates will rise accordingly, as will restaurant services, merchandise sales, casino spending - all prompting new employment through a knock-on effect known as the "multiplier factor.'

Oscar Goodman, the mayor of Las Vegas, who professed to be the "world's happiest mayor" even in the thick of Sin City's financial woes, says that his smile has been stretched a little further by Dion's return.

Gary Selesener, president of Caesars Palace, said that there has been top-level debate over the wisdom of staging such a major show against a backdrop of such severe economic hardship before the decision was made to sign Dion for 210 performances over the next three years.

The hotel casino lost $831.1 million last year - around $3.5 million more than its net income in 2009. Despite the continuing hangover from the recession, he said, "People still want to see the big stars get on the stage and sing their hits."

Dion has moved her family - husband and manager René Angélil, 69, son René-Charles, 10, and five-month-old twins Nelson and Eddy, into her penthouse at the hotel, along with her sister to care for the twins while she sleeps and her brother-in-law to cook for her.

Appropriately enough for a star expected to work the Midas Touch on Las Vegas, among her songlist on opening night was the theme from the James Bond film Goldfinger. But the star, who is reaping a $500,000 pay packet per show, claims not to believe in her own powers of financial influence.

"I want people to come and not feel disappointed. That's my most important job," she said. "I personally don't think I have anything to do with the economy."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8392760/Celine-Dion-promises-to-bring-the-sparkle-back-to-Las-Vegas.html
:D

[HeatSeeker]

Dion, 42, is the best-selling female artist of all time

:dead:

[Wayne]

What? She is :tehe:

Haha. Hagdonna takes that title.

[Wayne]

Ticket sales for Celine Dion's newly opened Las Vegas show are hot this week, taking the Caesars Palace - Colosseum to number one in TicketNews' exclusive venues rankings for the week ending Sunday, March 27.

The rankings leader for the second week in a row, the venue is home for the next three years to Dion, who crushed all rivals in TicketNews' Top Vegas Events rankings, even making it to three in this week's Top Concerts and four in the Top Events rankings. Caesars Palace – Colosseum power scored a 2.23 this week.

Next, the Prudential Center made a big move this week, up five to take the number two slot with a power score of 2.08. The home of the New Jersey Nets and New Jersey Devils was the setting this weekend for the NCAA Men's Basketball East Regional semi-finals and final. In music, Lady Gaga hits the stage in April.

Bumped by both Celine Dion and NCAA tournament play, Madison Square Garden (MSG) dropped one this week to take the number three position. MSG's New York Knicks, hitting at number eight in Top Sports, certainly helped keep the venue strong in the rankings, as did its other home team, the New York Rangers.

Read more here (http://www.ticketnews.com/rankings/Celine-Dion-propels-Caesars-Palace-in-Las-Vegas-to-the-top-of-the-venue-rankings)

:D

[Wayne]

Happy Birthday to the queen! :legend:

[exfactor003]

happy birthday, Célisus. :legend:

[chantoya17]

Happy 43th Bday to ya Celine :)

[Wayne]

Strip Scribbles: Celine Dion is the greatest singer in all the world

http://photo.lasvegasweekly.com/img/photos/2011/03/15/scaled.7__t420.jpg?e2839eb8a119d4fa52c4ed1e5a2462d 1b2132cb5

As The Colosseum headliner Celine Dion celebrates her 43rd birthday today, the superstar singer goes into the record books for an extraordinary achievement. She becomes the first solo artist to eclipse attendance at March Madness games. In fact, for two weeks in a row, Celine’s ticket sales have been No. 1 over all other venue attractions. How do you top that birthday gift?!


It’s a private, non-working family birthday tonight as she has the week off at Caesars Palace due to the National Association of Theater Owners’ CinemaCon using her Colosseum for screenings and awards presentations. Celine resumes her residency Friday night.


QUEEN! :legend:

[Wayne]

I am exhausted. I've spent the last two and three quarter hours [165 minutes!!] compiling my estimations for ONE artist [Celine Dion]. If this is how long it will take for one artist, then this website is going to take friggin' ages :-/

Anyway, the final number I came up with for her album sales is 173,600,000 - don't ask me to post the full breakdown though, you'll get that when the website launches. But to give you an example of how I'm structuring the breakdowns for each artist, here is the breakdown for Falling Into You, her second highest-selling album:

Falling Into You:
http://di1.shopping.com/images/pi/fc/e8/80/2002067050-200x200-0-0.jpg?p=p10.65a85831870cc3d97712&a=2&c=1&l=8055916&t=101027024825&r=12

North America: 14,850,000
USA - 13,000,000
Canada - 1,850,000
South America: 750,000
Argentina - 100,000
Brazil - 350,000
Mexico - 200,000
Europe: 8,150,000
Austria - 150,000
Belgium - 250,000
Denmark - 200,000
Finland - 50,000
France - 1,300,000
Germany - 1,300,000
Italy - 300,000
Netherlands - 700,000
Norway - 120,000
Poland - 175,000
Portugal - 70,000
Spain - 300,000
Sweden - 230,000
UK - 2,400,000
Asia: 3,600,000
Hong Kong - 250,000
Indonesia - 200,000
Japan - 1,200,000
Korea - 400,000
Malaysia - 250,000
Philippines -240,000
Singapore - 230,000
Thailand - 100,000
Taiwan - 675,000
Africa: 1,300,000
South Africa - 600,000
Oceania: 1,250,000
Australia - 1,000,000
New Zealand - 250,000

= ~ 30,550,000

[Wayne]

LOVE this picture:

http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/500/62072827/Cline+Dion+Awesome.png

[Wayne]

In a Hollywood Life Poll (http://www.hollywoodlife.com/2011/04/25/most-beautiful-celebrity-wedding-dress-gowns-princess-diana/), Celine Dion has taken a commanding lead over the competition that asks which of the following is the most beautiful celebrity bride?

http://www.vanityedge.com/forum/images/hollywoodlifepoll.PNG

[Wayne]

Sometimes When We Touch isn’t the first song you’d expect to hear from a world-renowned tough guy. “I thought it’d be looked at as awfully sentimental and I’d be seen as a wimp,” says Dan Hill, the song’s author, who recently changed his mind after boxing superstar Manny Pacquiao approached him about recording a version of his tender 1977 love song.

Last year, Hill was invited to New York where Pacquiao was receiving the “Boxer of the Decade” award from Joe Frazier, and suddenly the Canadian musician’s memory was struck as if by a mean right hook — Frazier had also recorded the song.

“I guess since they’re so confident in their masculinity they can just say, ‘Man I love that song,’ because they’re tough-asses,” Hill says. “Boxers don’t have to worry about being called wimps.”

Pacquiao, the welterweight champion of the world and a congressman in his native Philippines, is releasing seven versions of the song May 31, along with a DVD about his life and the recording process. Hill narrates the film.

“The great thing about Manny is his devotion to the very old-fashioned notion of practice,” says the 57-year-old Hill, who jokes about being the oldest person to score a Top 10 hit on Filipino radio, where the record has already been released. “When you hear Manny, you get the feeling he believes everything that he’s saying — in pop music, that’s huge.”

Currently writing for Celine Dion and patching together a new crop of music for his own album, Hill was thrilled to spar with the famed fighter.

“Manny came straight from training in his sweat stuff to the studio, where we worked for 12 hours straight,” Hill recalls, adding that the boxer was in the midst of training for a match against Antonio Margarito, who outweighed Pacquiao by 17 pounds. “I wanted to get the best vocal out of him, but you don’t have to worry about Celine Dion going into a boxing match the next day.”

In the end, Pacquiao scored a unanimous decision over Margarito, and claimed the world’s super welterweight title. He also finished the song and earned Hill another batch of royalties. The track may even surpass Simon & Garfunkel’s The Boxer as a new theme song for the fighting world. For his part, Hill remains impressed by his “tough-ass” friend.

“I hung out with him in Vegas for a week when he fought [“Sugar” Shane Mosley] and it was one of the weirdest weeks of my life,” says Hill, recalling one day that packed in a boxing match, car crash and nightclub performance.

“The thing that struck me was how much his voice had improved from October,” Hill says. “I couldn’t believe the clarity of his tone.”

Manny Pacquiao Sings featuring Dan Hill is released May 31 on Universal Music Canada.

SOURCE = NATIONAL POST (http://arts.nationalpost.com/2011/05/30/the-ballad-of-manny-pacquiao-and-dan-hill/)

Love the song, Sometimes When We Touch! Hope he works his magic for miss Celine!

[Wayne]

Backup singer Elise Duguay says Celine Dion ‘makes all the difference’

After a seven-week break, superstar singer Celine Dion resumed her headline run of shows at Caesars Palace tonight, and her backup singer Elise Duguay, who is considering moving to Las Vegas full time, first met Celine in 1987 and has spoken candidly about their nearly 25-year relationship. The interview backstage in Celine’s guest lounge at The Colosseum painted an intimate portrait of their professional and personal lives.

Elise told me: “I never wanted to be a star myself. I never wanted to be up front. I was always happy and having fun in the background.” The singers met on the small 10- to 15-city Incognito Tour in 1987 when Elise was a backup singer in Quebec. Afterward, Elise returned to her TV and recording studio background vocal work, but then out of the blue in 1994, Celine called, and the call changed Elise’s life.

“She was becoming big in America. I was called in when one of the singers left. I didn’t have to audition, but I only had a week to learn the show vocally in Montreal. I learned in my own living room watching a video of her in Boston. Seven days later, I was onstage with her in Toronto. I’ve been one of her backup singers ever since, and now I am the longest. We have traveled everywhere in the world. I was here in Las Vegas for the entire run of A New Day and then around the world for two years. Now we are all so happy to be back in Las Vegas again.”

Elise, a former cello player in a touring Cirque du Soleil show in Japan, has two brothers who also are singers. She returned to her Montreal studio work when Celine took time off to have children. I asked Elise to explain her role in the show. She said: “We complete the package. We bring a little movement to the stage. There’s the vocals, the different harmonies, we dance, we move, we execute the choreography. It looks good.

“I’m passionate about the harmony of voices, the way they blend and mix. The union of voices touches me and gives me goose bumps. I like being in the background. There are three of us. We are very faithful people, and it works. I am perfectly fulfilled. I work for the most amazing and nicest woman.

“Celine has this particular voice that nobody in the world can match. We try to blend in with her. I think that all backup singers have to have the talent to blend with the lead singer. You might never recognize our voice, but it becomes a complete package. I think my voice is constantly getting better because she has such an amazing voice. I watch her and listen and always try to better myself. The voice is a muscle, so practice and exercise, like everything else.

“I still to this day go over my vocals every day. I go in my room and do my warm-up for close to an hour every night of the show, and then we have the nightly sound check with Celine. My day starts with warm-ups as early as 1 or 2 p.m. Then at 4 p.m., I come to The Colosseum to start hair. I like to be prepared.”

Elise loves Celine’s new schedule because it meshes with her own son so well. Elise has a 9-year-old son Lucas, who until now has gone on tour, too. She wants to settle down here, since Celine’s show will be here for five years, and give him stability. She continued: “Celine wanted this schedule for her son because of school. It meshes with my son, too.

“The longest we will go without seeing each other is three weeks, so it’s not too bad. We have Skype. And that technology is amazing. My son understands I am a singer in a star’s show, but I don’t think it matters to him in any special way. When he was on tour with us, Celine was just a person to him. But now at school, he is beginning to get questions about Celine.

“We love doing this show every night. With the audience, it’s never the same. Celine has her jokes, we have our jokes in the back. It is fun. Every show is different! She makes jokes with us, but she is very professional.

“Celine doesn’t play the star. The whole world is amazed by the simplicity of our team. I'm very proud of what we do but very modest about it. We’re one big team. There are incredible friendships built among us. We always say being with Celine is the best we have ever seen. She -- and she alone -- makes all the difference. She eats, laughs, dances and jokes with us. She mingles with the musicians, the technicians, the truck drivers. She is warm, maternal and very protective. If someone is sick or injured, you can be sure that Celine is always the first to tend to the person.

“After every show when she has returned to her dressing room, she thanks everyone over the loud speaker. She is really very generous! She loves people. She is disciplined but always in a good mood, and I'm lucky to be working at her side. We are both preoccupied with our voices. We have to take very good care of it, and sometimes we’ll do vocal exercises together to warm up the chords.

Stacey Tookey, a judge and choreographer on Fox’s So You Think You Can Dance, worked with Celine for five years on A New Day and echoed Elise’s sentiments.

“Celine is the best boss ever. That five-year run was one of the most memorable experiences of my life. She treated us like gold. We were taken care of so well with the best trainers, teachers and physical therapy people for yoga, Pilates and massage. We even got free haircuts, and Wolfgang Puck catered a meal once a week for us where Celine would come around and just hang out with us. That’s rare for a celebrity of her standard. I can’t say enough great things about her.”

Elise continued: “I’m ready to do it for a very long time. It is a passion and my pleasure. We have a good relation with Celine. Onstage, she makes faces at us and rolls her eyes. She’s a real tease! I collaborate with Celine when she performs ‘The Power of Love.’ During ‘Misled’ and ‘Love Can Move Mountains,’ the backup singers are placed at the front of the stage to dance, clap our hands and get the audience involved.”

Elise is happiest of all being back in her second home of Las Vegas, which now could turn into a full-time residence. “I was very happy to come back. After we moved back to Canada in 2007, I hadn’t been back. I was actually anxious to get back. It’s my home away from home now. My husband (Denis Savage) and I have spoken about moving here when our son goes to high school. We really enjoy being back.

“We didn’t know it was just like any other city when we first moved here. I am very, very happy with my life, with Celine’s show. The only thing I would like is to learn more cello. Maybe I’ll get good one night so I can change places and become one of the three cello players for their segment.”

Celine’s new run that kicked off tonight -- and included Sir George Martin, Steve Wynn and Phil Ruffin in the audience -- continues through Aug. 14. Then Sir Elton John and Rod Stewart have concert dates at Caesars Palace until her Dec. 28 return through Jan. 22, with tickets now on sale for those dates.

SOURCE: Vegas Deluxe (http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/blogs/luxe-life/2011/jun/07/backup-singer-elise-duguay-says-celine-dion-makes-/):love:

[Wayne]

THE RETAIL POWER OF QUEEN CELINE DION

Loyalty first rule of thumb for Celine Dion

The likeness or name of most singers can sell T-shirts, key chains and calendars.

But only one performer has the retail power to sell a $3,000 purse: Celine Dion.

"Some of the unique things she can sell really sets her apart from what other entertainers can do," says Courtney Cook, retail buyer for Caesars Entertainment. "I'm not sure that anyone else could sell a $3,000 Judith Leiber bag. No, I'm not just sure. I know they couldn't."

Dion returned to Caesars Palace with a new show in March after being away for four years. Her retail store, Celine, opened at the same time, offering fans a range of merchandise sporting Dion's image or name. Items are as inexpensive as a $1 postcard or as pricey as the Leiber bag.

The small, black clutch is covered in musical notes, a reference to Dion's focus on music in her new show, says Cook, who worked with the singer's team to stock the store with merchandise that best represents her.

Cook was able to reference information about Dion's retail history from her last residency at Caesars. After spending time with Dion's advisers, Cook identified qualities that should inform the merchandise.

"She has an extremely loyal following," Cook says. "Fans love her. She has a very specific look. She's chic, dainty, very feminine, that's what you think of when you see Celine."

Knowing that, Cook was able to put together a profile of the Dion fan and then stock the gift shop accordingly. Her fans want high quality items and are willing to pay more for them. So, the shirts have sparkles or similar touches; there are items such as a throw blanket, drink coasters, perfumes, picture frames, flip-flops, sunglasses, watches and even water bottles, all featuring Dion's name or likeness.

Roberto Coin designed jewelry for the gift shop with some pieces costing more than $1,000.

"The retail world knows her draw," Cook says. "When we called Leiber, they were thrilled to have the opportunity."

Wisconsin fan James Zhang, 20, represents the typical Celine Dion fan, he says. Along with a friend from Singapore, Zhang planned for years to come to Las Vegas to see Dion perform. They missed her first run, so as soon as they heard about the new show, they splurged on the most expensive tickets and decided to turn it into a Celine-centric vacation. He shopped in the store two hours before the show, buying perfume for his mother and sister and CDs for himself.

"All my life I've been listening to her," gushed the pre-law student. "This has been a dream for years in the making."

Cook refused to discuss specific numbers but said that the retail store sales are tracking slightly higher compared to Dion's last run at Caesars.

"We had our reservations going into this set of shows," she says. "You know, it's a different time, different economy than when she left in 2007. Retail has changed. People are very price-conscious. But people are coming back, they want to go to the show, they want to buy her merchandise. It's amazing that Celine can command the kind of prices that she does."

http://www.lvrj.com/living/loyalty-first-rule-for-celine-dion-fans-124151193.html

[Wayne]

I was thinking about this initial experience with career entertainers as I sat in the audience on successive weekends for Celine Dion’s show at Caesars Palace and the 30th anniversary performance of Jubilee! at Bally’s. Though both of these quintessential Las Vegas experiences are sort of bookends on the myriad entertainment options in this town, I was equally amazed, dazzled, amused and awestruck, for vastly different reasons, by both spectacles.


What Elvis was to Vegas two generations ago, one could argue Celine Dion has come closest to becoming now. Yes, Celine is technically perfect but she’s also homespun, insanely gifted and a world-class, indefatigable, consummate entertainer. I couldn’t have been more impressed.


Source (http://www.vegasinc.com/news/2011/aug/08/what-elvis-was-vegas-two-generations-ago-celine-di/)

[djdiva]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wJ_MXB3GS0

Wayne, you know about this, bb? :baby:

[Wayne]

djdiva - NO! :shocked: AMAZING! <3 The start is so much better. I LOVE the bridge so much more too! Although it feels weird not hearing the "no no no"

[Wayne]

Bumped to begin discussion with seantrainor

In response to your PM Sean, my favourite album is either A New Day Has Come or The Colour Of My Love. And I shan't reveal my favourite song just yet, as I'll one day be presenting my ultimate favourite Celine Dion countdown, containing my top 200 favourite Celine songs! :D

What about you?

[Wayne]

I have for years contested that her wealth exceeds anything else we could ever imagine. She is for my money the wealthiest female singer of all-time.



The woman sitting quietly in a corner of her palatial Florida home is using a breast pump to store her milk for her twin babies. There’s little dignity to the time-intensive routine. And even cracking jokes while using the uncomfortable device for the task doesn’t help. She looks exhausted, like scores of other new mothers who have come before her.


With a difference: The mother in question is singer Celine Dion – and she’s pumping for a television audience as well as her boys Eddy and Nelson. “There’s not only food in there,” she says to the camera, “there’s love.”


Called Celine: 3 Boys and a New Show, Dion’s upcoming documentary special on Oprah Winfrey’s OWN network is full of gushy, maternal musings. But while they might seem corny, the megastar – who in the past has often seemed to resort to greeting-card clichés in speaking to the press – is clearly not acting. She’s mad for her new babies, as well as her 10-year-old boy René-Charles. Not to mention her long-time husband and manager René Angélil, a man who fiercely protects his wife’s image as a crowd-pleaser with Titanic-sized pipes and has established her as one of the world’s richest women (with a personal wealth estimated at more than $1-billion).


Still, it’s a little unusual for the notoriously private artist, now 43, to invite a camera crew (even her pal Oprah’s camera crew) into her all-white, $20-million oceanside Florida home, where they follow her every move, from nursery to kitchen to walk-in closet, and join in everything from the kids’ baptism to rehearsals as mom Dion prepares – with just five months of prep time – to return to Caesars Palace for her Las Vegas one-woman live show, seen so far by more than 3.25 million adoring fans.


Some may adore her a little too much, of course – there was the fan, for example, who recently entered her Montreal home and had helped himself to pastry from Dion’s fridge and started to run a warm bath before he was caught by police. But there are also folks who don’t love her. Over the years, the singer has polarized listeners, sometimes inspiring a zealous dislike that’s a bit bewildering, given the long-necked, lithesome star’s track record. The five-time Grammy winner has sold more than 220 million records and never made a huge misstep. (Okay, her marriage-vow renewal in 2000 – with the camels, exotic birds and six Berber tents, each representing a scene from A Thousand and One Nights – was a little over the top.)


Regardless of her public image, since the birth of her son, René-Charles, and her 69-year-old husband’s cancer scare 10 years ago, Dion has largely left the limelight. She performs primarily at The Colosseum theatre at Caesars Palace in extended runs that last for years, so she can move her entire family to Vegas to live near her rather than drag them around the world on tours.


“I see this time as the greatest gift of all,” said Dion last week, talking from a limo on Angélil’s cellphone on the way to a concert in Central Park with Andrea Bocelli, David Foster and Tony Bennett (her sister’s with Dion’s children in a second limo behind them – you try doing phone interviews with three kids in the car). “This [motherhood] is the most extraordinary gift that life can give us. I’m trying to cherish every second.”


In her 90-minute TV special, Dion certainly seems to let her guard down more than she ever has: We hear about her determination to conceive (she went through six rounds of in-vitro fertilization for the twins), and see her fretting that her breast milk might leak through the front of her gown while onstage, helping René-Charles with homework in her sweatpants and insisting that she – not a night nurse – will wake up every two hours to feed her hungry babies.


Read more: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/music/at-home-with-celine-dion-superstar-mom-yes-shes-wearing-sweatpants/article2177809/

[caroline953]

Dion had first gained international recognition in the 1980s by winning both the 1982 Yamaha World Popular Song Festival and the 1988 Eurovision Song Contest.

[dolis1]

She is one of my favourite female singer. Among her song collection I like her two songs very much one is “My heart will go on and the other song is “Because you loved me.