As the sun sets behind the mountains in an upscale suburb thirty minutes from the Las Vegas strip, I hear a familiar voice singing behind a closed door.
"Is that Celine?" I ask. The man manning her hotel room nods.
She seems to be in a good mood, so I'm going to interview this megastar of the music industry. Supporters fearing they would never hear the well-known voice I can hear casually singing away. "I've been dealing with health problems for a long time," she said in an Instagram video from December 2022.
"I have been diagnosed with a very rare neurological disorder." Following that devastating news, Celine Dion called off the remainder of her world tour, and she hasn't been seen in public very much since.
Warning signs
Officially, her little-known illness is called Stiff Person Syndrome (SPS), a neurological condition that causes muscular spasms. When we get a chance to talk, Celine informs me that the illness was undiagnosed for many years. The 56-year-old discusses how, as a performer, her voice began to change while she was on tour. According to the well-known Canadian, "It was just feeling a little strange, like a little spasm." "My voice was struggling, I was starting to push a little bit." She highlights the little shift in her voice—that is, the fact that she was having to work to hold notes that used to come more naturally—by singing the first few bars of her 1993 hit song The Power of Love.
Occasionally, she would request that the conductor of the supporting musicians play a couple of their songs at a lower key for a few performances. She continues, "I had to figure out how to be on stage." She reasoned that her voice could have an opportunity to recover if she sang a little bit lower. The public would never have known about the struggles she was facing behind the scenes. But according to Celine, taking a break didn't seem feasible just now. "These performances sold out for a full year and a half, traveling all over the world."And I'm going to apologize to them for my outburst. Please excuse my ambiguous comment. Unaware of the root of her issues, she put a lot of pressure on herself to maintain the program.
Still, there was just too much of it all. When her ultimate diagnosis was given, it was determined that this was more than simply fatigue. It went on forever. SPS is an autoimmune disease with potentially dangerous outcomes. There's no approved therapy for this.
It is caused by faulty nerve and muscle communication. Sometimes during an episode, the spasms might be so excruciating that she can scarcely move. But now that the condition has been accurately identified, she is much more knowledgeable about it and understands that it is curable. "My goal is to make a donation to the funds being collected to increase awareness and find a cure. That sounds wonderful," she says.
Celine has adjusted to her time away from performances with the help of medical experts including Dr. Amanda Piquet, physical therapy, and medicines.
"Now this disease is gaining public awareness, it's in the public eye," asserts Dr. Piquet.
Dr. Piquet treated several patients who had gone years without receiving a diagnosis. Celine thinks that more people will be treated if she tells her experience and increases awareness of the illness.
As Dr. Piquet put it, "We need to diagnose this disease better." "When we do, that's going to lead to more clinical trials, and more treatments that are approved." She asserts that while Celine will always have this condition, the therapy she is getting to lessen her muscle spasms will allow her to return to performing on stage. As promised, Celine will "rebuild my voice." That has, in fact, been going on for a while. As we converse, my voice is now being fixed."
Performance in Las Vegas
Fans will see in the upcoming documentary I Am: Celine Dion how the singer's health problems have affected her life. Now that she can finally see a way back into acting, she has been preparing for a new show in Las Vegas. "We have been working so hard to put this show together because I'm back," she says with a big smile. It's clear that she has missed doing awful performances.
"I'll get up on stage. I'll shout it out, but I'm not sure when exactly.I'm excited. Celine now has the highest lucrative residency on the Las Vegas strip in history. Despite her genuine satisfaction with her career, her time away has given her the opportunity to consider other options. Even after years of travel, she has come to the realization that she has not seen much of the world.
There has, she says, been "a price to pay" for traveling constantly in tour mode. "I wanted to spend all of my days off getting ready for the next show. Despite my global travels, I saw relatively little.However, the public has expressed their immense gratitude for my singing and performances." The queen of power ballads
In an attempt to get us to study French, one of our high school lecturers put Celine Dion's song Pour Que Tu M'aimes Encore on a cassette tape. That's the first thing I remember about her. She is most known to audiences as the queen of power ballads. Her angelic voice instantly identifies her 1990s hits, including The Power of Love and It's All Coming Back to Me Now. But even at the height of her health issues, Celine admits that she was kind of envious of the breathy, "whisperpop" style of a few modern female performers.
On the opposite extreme of the volume range, artists like Billie Eilish and Lana Del Rey are releasing huge hits. "I thought it would be best to just go to bed really late at night and start smoking," she says. "I experienced envy. They're going out, enjoying themselves, hardly dressed, and I think that's awesome.
This is not the same as the strict routine she has followed for the most of her career.
"I was like, don’t talk, and don’t eat this, that’s too much dairy, it’s going to produce phlegm." She continues her joke, implying that maybe she would give up on her classical training and adopt a rougher voice. Celine says, "How about that for a concert?" grinning at the camera. Despite her ongoing health struggles, she never loses her sense of humor. Whatever appearance she chooses, her reappearance will be much anticipated by her fans.
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