The frenzy surrounding Céline Dion has subsided now that 480,000 tickets have been sold for 16 Paris concerts this autumn. The real issue was not whether La Défense Arena in Paris would be filled, but rather who, among nine million ticket requests, would manage to secure a seat. The ordeal was epic, to the point that the British magazine The Spectator, on April 6, described it as the most talked-about event in France since Charles de Gaulle’s retirement in 1958, and also as a moment of “joy” for the French, who are sorely in need of it. Good heavens!
What is astonishing is the unanimous hysteria. When an excellent chef, in the midst of the dinner rush at her restaurant, abandoned her stove to camp out behind a computer in search of two tickets for Dion, we asked her whether the singer was truly worth such an effort. She did not find it amusing in the slightest.
Let’s dare to ask the unaskable question: How can anyone love Céline Dion? We do not enjoy her syrupy music or her “grandiose” and endless gowns. The song titles, for example, “J’irai où tu iras” (“I Will Go Wherever You Go”), do not encourage further exploration. The lyrics are painful: “I will seek your heart if you take it elsewhere; I will seek your soul in the cold, in the flames. I will cast spells on you so that you’ll love me again.” It does not get better with “Dansons,” a song crafted for her by Jean-Jacques Goldman and released online on April 17. The premise? Since the world is in a bad way, we should dance, “forehead to forehead, snowflakes on the horizon.”
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