In The End, Her Voice Will Go On

Source:  www.globeandmail.com - Alan Neister

Celine Dion
At the Air Canada Centre In Toronto on Wednesday

(August 29, 2008) One of the most obvious trends in the music scene over the past couple of years has been the aggrandizement of the live concert experience.

Certainly, live pop and rock concerts have always aimed for a visual enhancement. I remember ELO in the eighties “arriving” onstage from the depths of a plywood UFO; and one of Spinal Tap's most memorable scenes was its mocking, with a Stonehenge set, the then-standard papier-mâché-and-paint stage props.

But these days, everyone seems to be trying to out-awe each other with their big-buck, high-tech visual extravaganzas – the very concept of a “Vegas-style” stage show seems a tad redundant. So it should come as no surprise that the woman who has spent the past four years perfecting her own extravaganza in Las Vegas (her well-documented A New Day revue at Caesars Palace) arrived in Toronto with a massive spectacular that challenges every other road show out there.

This performance is so bedazzling that it makes the Spice Girls farewell tour seem like porridge by comparison. It's a theatre-in-the-round (well, square, actually) presentation, with a stage festooned with more video screens than NASA headquarters. There is a tight seven-piece band that bounces up and down on a quartet of risers, giving them the appearance of a giant whack-a-mole gam. There are moving sidewalks (ZZ Top did it better 20 years ago), an accomplished and acrobatic dance troupe, and banks of dazzling lights.

And somewhere in the middle of this visual cacophony is Celine herself, moving energetically from side to side (to side to side) of the stage, and down the runways to the smaller stages, until keeping up with her movements becomes a sort of Where's Waldo? exercise (if Waldo had a five-octave vocal range, that is).

And when you did find Celine, well, at 40, she looks better than ever. Long, flowing, golden tresses; alabaster, blemish-free skin from head to toe (thank the giant video screens for this observation); facial features that seem more fleshed out and soft than in her rather angular past, all showcased in a half-dozen flashy but tasteful stage outfits.

All of which seems a tad ironic really, given that it is always completely about the voice, and the songs she performs with it. Strip away the extraneous packaging, ignore the occasional head-scratching song selection (James Brown's It's a Man's Man's Man's World, for example), and it's still possible to luxuriate in wonder at the incredible gift that is Dion's voice.

Her first performance here since 1999 (after which she took her well-publicized three-year break) kicked off with a pure rock song: I Drove All Night, best-known as a Top 10 hit for Cyndi Lauper, was useful to get things off to an energetic start.

But after that, it was directly into the power-ballad mode for which Dion is best known, as she emoted heavily on fan favourites The Power of Love, Taking Chances and Jim Steinman's It's All Coming Back To Me Now.

Mid-set brought more variety. Eyes On Me, which featured a kind of gypsy dance routine, tiptoed into Christina Aguilera territory. Eric Carmen's All By Myself was an exercise in vocal gymnastics. Shadow of Love (from the 2007 Taking Chances release) featured a nice, understated, rolling rhythm and counter-melody from the collection of backing singers.

Later on, Dion performed a powerful video duet with a filmed Andrea Bocelli on The Prayer, and tossed in a token French-language number (the response it received indicated a strong contingent of Francophones in the near-capacity audience), the international hit Pour que tu m'aimes. Her biggest and best, My Heart Will Go On from the film Titanic, was saved for the second encore.

As the show wrapped up, things got a little weird. A vocal and visual tribute to Freddy Mercury and Queen was odd, and the soul medley that followed seemed a bit clichéd. But we'll allow Celine her little hobby horses. If the best-selling female artist of all time feels the need for a little Respect, who are we to quibble?

The Taking Chances World Tour plays Toronto Saturday night, and Montreal Sunday and Monday, before heading to Vancouver, Edmonton and Winnipeg in October.

Special to The Globe and Mail