The singer, whose career is on hold due to a neurological disease she suffers from, promises to find her audience again.
Celine Dion will return to concert halls. This is what the singer, who revealed two years ago to be suffering from stiff person syndrome and has since retired, said this Sunday June 16 at 8 p.m. on TF1.
“I’m going to come back on stage,” promised the 56-year-old artist during this interview recorded in Las Vegas with Anne-Claire Coudray. “I don’t know when, but I’m going to come back on stage.”
While knowing that his voice is no longer the same. If she doesn’t say she “accepted” it, “she doesn’t refuse it”: “I’m trying to tame it. It’s an illness that affects my tendons, my nerves, my muscles. Everything I need I need to sing (…) To hear a voice that is not mine is to hear a voice that needs rehabilitation. It is coming, slowly.
The singer gave this interview to Anne-Claire Coudray a few days before the release of I am: Celine Dion, a documentary expected on Prime Video on June 25. This feature film directed by Irene Taylor sheds light on the singer’s new daily life, punctuated by her fight against stiff person syndrome. A rare neurological disease whose symptoms she mentioned during the interview:
“I want to be on stage tomorrow. But if I do too much, I can have a seizure. The body stiffens, the voice, everything. Everything stops working. For a few minutes or hours.”
According to the American Institutes of Health (NIH), stiff man syndrome is a rare neurological disease with characteristics of an autoimmune disease.
It is characterized by “fluctuating rigidity of the muscles in the trunk and limbs and increased sensitivity to external stimulations such as noise, touch, emotional distress… Which can trigger muscle spasms”.
His affected voice
She explains that these “episodes” can cause her to lose consciousness. Above all, this syndrome influences his ability to sing. It was even the first symptom that appeared, “almost 17 years” ago:
“It started in the voice. I tried to find bridges, tunnels, to take my voice to different places… Sing a little more through my nose…”
“It was spasms,” she described. “As if I put my hand on your (throat) and nothing worked. It happened to me in the middle of a concert (…) When I couldn’t sing, we canceled shows.”
Dangerous self-medication
Faced with the mystery, Céline Dion has long chosen self-medication. “Until taking very dangerous medications. Valium, among others. And without having a diagnosis.”
She confides, during this period, that she scared herself: “When we are at a very dangerous level of medication and it no longer works, we have two choices: either we continue, we stop breathing, “It’s over (…) We put so much weight on ourselves that we’re going to die (But) it’s not worth it when you’re a mother.”
“If I’m all alone, if I’ve lost everyone, if I want to stare into the dark and end my life like that, that’s my business. But I have a great responsibility, beyond being a singer”, confides the one who had three sons, René-Charles, Nelson and Eddy, with her husband René Angélil who died in 2016.
“It’s never going to go away.”
Aware of being affected by an illness that “will never go away”, it is partly for the public that Céline Dion wanted to open up in the upcoming documentary.
“They gave me an incredible life. Every time I invited them, they were there (…) If it’s something that’s going to take me away, I shouldn’t diary them They say I’m dead, even though I’m alive.”
“I’ve been an open book my whole life. I can’t change, that’s how I’m made.”
And conclude by sending a message to his fans: “Don’t experience your pain alone. Talk about it to your neighbors, your lovers, your children. Accept your weaknesses, talk about them and seek advice. Don’t suffer alone.”
