After years away from live performance, Céline Dion is preparing for a full-scale comeback in Paris.
If there was ever wonder that Céline Dion might be the most mind-over-matter person in music, her current training schedule is all the proof you need.
Preparing to return to the stage after years away, Dion is approaching it with the kind of regime you would expect from a professional athlete.
Her routine includes physical and vocal therapy, medication and immunotherapy, alongside 90-minute Pilates sessions three times a week and ballet twice a week.
Taylor Swift famously trained for the Eras Tour by singing the entire setlist while running on a treadmill, and Dion’s preparation sits in that same world of reminding us just how physical a major live show actually is. In her case, though, there is the considerable added challenge of stiff-person syndrome.
When Dion revealed her diagnosis in 2022, and later showed the reality of living with the rare neurological condition in I Am: Céline Dion, a full-scale return to performing honestly did not feel like something we would be writing about anytime soon. The condition had affected her movement, muscle control and, most painfully for someone who has spent her life singing, her voice.
Then came the Paris Olympics in 2024, when Dion appeared on the Eiffel Tower and delivered Édith Piaf’s ‘Hymne à l’amour’.
It was one of those properly goosebump-inducing television moments, although at the time it still felt entirely possible that the performance might remain a beautiful one-off.
Instead, Dion has spent the years since working her way back towards full shows, and the amount of training involved gives some idea of what that actually means.
This isn’t a story about simply willing herself better, either, with SPS remaining something she actively manages through treatment, rehabilitation and a fairly relentless physical routine.
Dion has also revealed that she experienced symptoms for around 17 years before finally receiving a diagnosis, which puts another layer on just how long she has been trying to work around a body that was no longer behaving the way she expected it to.
A Céline Dion concert has never exactly been a low-impact evening sitting on a stool, so rebuilding the stamina required to do it properly is a serious undertaking.
After everything it has taken to get her back to this point, the comeback itself is impressive, but the work behind it might be even more so.
