‘She never gave up and has been working in secret for months on her vocal strength and control’
As she continues to battle Stiff Person Syndrome, Celine Dion is reportedly set to make her live music comeback later this year in Las Vegas.
“Celine is coming back to perform,” a Vegas insider tells the outlet. “It is hush hush at the moment, but an announcement is imminent. Celine has signed off on singing again to audiences in November. She has worked incredibly hard to get back to a place where she can sing well and for some period of time. She believes that she is ready to perform for over an hour.”
The well-placed source goes on to say that Dion has been inspired to return to the stage because of her “desire” to be back in front her fans.
“She never gave up and has been working in secret for months on her vocal strength and control,” they say. “It started out as small sessions with her musicians at her home and has now grown into being able to sing a number of songs in a row to a standard she feels excited and content with.”
“Unfortunately, these spasms affect every aspect of my daily life … sometimes causing difficulties when I walk and not allowing me to use my vocal cords to sing the way I’m used to,” she told fans at the time.
The muscle spasms can be severe enough to affect mobility and cause a patient to fall. As it progresses, the disease makes if more difficult to walk and falls can become more frequent.
After suffering from symptoms for over a decade, the All By Myself singer said her busy work schedule prevented her from pausing to break and figure out what was going on with her health.
Last month, Dion, who last performed live in March 2020, detailed her struggle with the illness and her battle to return to the stage in the Prime Video documentary I Am: Celine Dion.
With the world shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic in the early part of 2020, and her tour plans delayed, Dion began investigating a variety of health issues that had plagued her for over a decade. The problems had progressively affected her singing voice and her mobility.
“There were moments where I cheated and tapped on the microphone like it was the microphone’s fault,” Dion says in the film, explaining how she concealed her illness from fans. Eventually, she started to medicate herself, taking copious amounts of Valium to go onstage every night. “I needed medicine to function. One more pill, two more pills, five more pills. Too many pills. The show must go on,” Dion says. “I don’t want to sound dramatic, but I could have died.”
One harrowing scene showed Dion in the midst of a 10-minute long seizure. The film’s director, Irene Taylor, told Postmedia in an interview that she didn’t know the severity of the six-time Grammy winner’s illness when they started filming.
But as she promoted her documentary, Dion hinted at an onstage return. It would be the ultimate ending in a comeback story that’s still being written.
“If I can’t run, I’ll walk. If I can’t walk, I’ll crawl,” Dion says of her drive to return to the stage in the film. “But I won’t stop. I won’t stop.”
Still, a second source tells the Sun that although a November return at Resorts World on the Vegas strip is being eyed, nothing is set in stone.
“There is some caution that if she is not ready for that then early 2025 will still be an option, because they want to make sure she and her medical advisors are 100% happy,” the insider tells the publication. “This syndrome is not something which obeys people’s schedules and plans and could flare up at any point. So this is a reality everyone has to live with.”