Celine Dion held the high F in All By Myself, blew out a breath, and turned back to look at her band. The 30,000 people at her first full concert in more than six years read the moment before they finished screaming.
It was the encore, and it was the answer to the question no one had been sure of. Not whether she could still sing, but whether she could get through a full show and then do it again a few nights later. Stiff person syndrome, the rare progressive neurological disease that attacked her muscles including those of the throat, had kept her from the stage since 2018.
She gave the crowd three words before the note. Je vais bien. I am doing fine.
A primary schoolteacher named Elodie Marchand, 42, from Nantes, told a reporter she had grabbed her friend’s arm when the note came. She said she had been holding her breath without realizing it. Then she started crying. She said Celine is back, she’s really back.
The song and what it meant
All By Myself has been the benchmark for Dion’s voice since 1996, when her recording of the Eric Carmen ballad became one of the signature moments of an already extraordinary career. The high F in that song is the kind of note that separates the singers who can reach it technically from those who can hold it with the power and control the moment demands.
The fact that she saved it for the encore was a choice. She built to it. She made the crowd wait. And then she gave it to them.
The illness and the return
Stiff person syndrome is a neurological condition that causes severe muscle rigidity and spasms. In Dion’s case, it affected her throat muscles, which are the mechanism by which a singer controls pitch, tone and power. The disease is rare and progressive, meaning it tends to worsen over time, and there is no cure.
Dion spoke publicly about the diagnosis in 2022 after years of declining health had kept her off the stage and forced the cancellation of her Courage World Tour. The intervening years have been marked by treatment, recovery, and uncertainty about whether she would perform again at this level.
The Nanterre concert, outside Paris, was her first full show since 2018. For an artist who has sold more than 200 million records and who performed at the Paris Olympics closing ceremony in 2024 in a moment that became one of the most watched clips of the year, the return to a full-length performance was a different kind of test.
The high F was the test. She passed.
