DUBAI (AlArabiya.net)
Céline Dion will perform in Dubai on March 5 -- her first ever Middle Eastern performance – as part of her worldwide ‘Taking Chances’ tour.
“She is very excited to be bringing her show to a place she has never been to before," said Duncan Heafield, a spokesman for tour management company Kusasa.
Heafield said Dion's husband-manager René Angélil – a Canadian of Lebanese ancestry – will be accompanying her on his first visit to the region.
Dion – the biggest-selling female artist of all time with 175 million records sold worldwide – will perform at the new Four Seasons Golf Club at Dubai's Festival City.
From humble beginnings in rural French Canada, Dion rose to international superstardom and recently ranked third – after Madonna and Barbra Streisand – in the Forbes.com list of "Cash Queens of Music" with 12-month earnings of $45 million.
Dion's international breakthrough came when she recorded the title track for the soundtrack to Disney's 'Beauty and the Beast, picking up an Academy Award and a Grammy Award.
She followed this up with the blockbuster Titanic song, “My Heart will go On” which won the Academy Award for Best Original Song.
In December, Dion wrapped up a five-year engagement at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.
While the show was still in development in 2000, Dion, 39, became pregnant and told husband-manager René Angélil she did not want to continue.
"I had a life for the first time," the French-Canadian chanteuse later said in a video before her 717th Vegas show. "I knew then that I wanted to have more success as a mother than a singer."
But Angélil told her that too much money and too many people were involved. Not only would the Colosseum cost $95 million to build, her initial three-year, $100-million contract broke records for a live entertainer.
So she pushed on, fighting through initial bad reviews to make it five years of filling a 4,100-seat arena. The show, 'A New Day', grossed more than $400 million and was seen by nearly 3 million fans. |
