Celine Dion’s Paris residency makes big bucks

Key Points

• Celine Dion raked in $125.5 million in a September and October residency in Paris, according to Billboard.

• The shows marked Dion’s return to the stage following her diagnosis with stiff-person’s syndrome.

• The “Power of Love” singer had vowed to make a comeback despite her many health challenges.

Celine Dion’s comeback in France has been a smashing success.

The first leg of her residency at the Plénitude Arena, titled simply Celine Dion Paris, sold 539,000 tickets and took in $125.5 million at 16 shows in September and October, Billboard reported Thursday.

Although the numbers didn’t make the list of the top 10 highest-grossing residencies, they were staggering.

The nightly average her performances brought in was $7.8 million, which was more than 10 times what she took in from her Las Vegas stints before the shutdown. The magazine points out that the nightly average exceeds the $6.1 million per show that U2 brought in for its own residency at the Sphere; that’s significant because that stint was deemed the “fastest grossing residency ever.”

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The “Power of Love” singer last toured in March 2020, when she halted her concerts due to the pandemic.

Before she could reschedule, Dion, 58, announced that she had been diagnosed with stiff-person syndrome, which made it difficult for her to perform as she had in the past.

“I’ve been dealing with problems with my health for a long time, and it’s been really difficult for me to face these challenges and to talk about everything I’ve been going through,” Dion said in a December 2022 video. “Recently I’ve been diagnosed with a very rare neurological disorder called stiff-person syndrome [SPS], which affects something like one in a million people.”

She said the condition had affected her ability to sing her hit songs, including “Because You Loved Me,” “My Heart Will Go On,” and “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now.”

“While we’re still learning about this rare condition, we now know this is what’s been causing all of the spasms that I’ve been having,” Dion said. “Unfortunately, the spasm affects 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.”

The Grammy winner later described trying to overcome the autoimmune disorder, which causes muscle rigidity, spasms, mobility issues, and shortness of breath, as “one of the hardest experiences of my life.”

Still, she was insistent that she would return to the stage.

“I’m gonna go back onstage, even if I have to crawl,” Dion told Today‘s Hoda Kotb in June 2024. “Even if I have to talk with my hands. I will. I will. I am Celine Dion. Because today my voice will be heard for the first time, not just because I have to, or because I need to. It’s because I want to. And I miss it.”

Clearly, so did her fans.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly