Céline Marie Claudette Dion ()
OC, C.C OQ (born March 30, 1968 in
Charlemagne, Quebec) is a
Canadian pop singer, occasional
songwriter and
actress.
[Celine Dion. Grammy.com. Retrieved July 23, 2008.][Britannica.com. Céline Dion. Retrieved January 13, 2006.] Born to a large, impoverished family, Dion emerged as a teen star in the French-speaking world after her manager and future husband
René Angélil mortgaged his home to finance her first record.
[Celine Dion Biography. "Canoe Jam!." Retrieved September 13, 2007.] In 1990, she released the
anglophone album
Unison, establishing herself as a viable pop artist in North America and other English-speaking areas of the world.
Dion had first gained international recognition in the 1980s by winning both the 1982
Yamaha World Popular Song Festival and the
1988 Eurovision Song Contest.
[Bliss, Karen. "25 Years of Canadian Artists." Canadian Musician. March 1, 2004, p. 34. ISSN: 07089635]["Past Eurovision Winners." Baltics Worldwide. September 13th, 2007.] Following a series of French albums in the early 1980s, she signed on to
Sony Records in 1986. During the 1990s, with the help of Angélil, she achieved worldwide success with several English and French albums, becoming one of the most successful artists in pop music history.
[Taylor, Chuck. "Epic/550's Dion offers Hits." Billboard. November 6, 1999, p. 1.]["The Ultimate Diva". CNN. October 22, 2002. Retrieved September 13, 2007.] However, in 1999 at the height of her success, Dion announced a temporary retirement from entertainment in order to start a family and spend time with her husband, who had been diagnosed with cancer.
[Celine Dion. "Interview with Celine Dion." Peter Nansbridge. The National. With Alison Smith. CBC-TV. March 28, 2002. Transcript.] She returned to the music scene in 2002 and signed a three-year (later extended to almost five years) contract to perform nightly in a five-star
theatrical show at the Colosseum at
Caesars Palace,
Las Vegas.
["Celine Dion Biography." The Biography Channel. September 13, 2007.][Helligar, Jeremy. "Celine Dion livin' la vida Vegas!." Us. March 31, 2003, p. 56.]
