Celine Dion is coming to Manila

CANADIAN songstress Celine Dion will finally hold a concert in the Philippine capital, four years after she was originally scheduled to perform in the Philippines.

Her show on July 19 at the SM Mall of Asia Arena is part of the Celine Dion Live 2018 tour which will take her to seven cities across the region including Singapore, Jakarta, Taipei, and Bangkok.

Ms. Dion was originally supposed to perform in Manila in 2014 but had to cancel due to the deteriorating health of her husband and manager, Rene Angelil.

The Asian leg of Ms. Dion’s tour will kick on June 26 in Tokyo and will bring her to cities “she hasn’t performed in for 10 years” including Tokyo and Macau, said a press release.

Ms. Dion first made a name for herself in 1981 — at the age of 13 — after releasing her first studio album, La Voix du bon Dieu. Her manager, Mr. Angelil, mortgaged his home to produce the record as he was determined to make the young Canadian singer a star. (They married in 1994.)

The following year, Ms. Dion joined the Yamaha World Popular Song Festival in Tokyo, taking home the awards for Top Performer and the gold medal for Best Song with “Tellement j’ai d’amour pour toi.”

Her international breakthrough came in 1991 when she sang with Peabo Bryson on the title track of Disney’s animated hit movie Beauty and the Beast. The song became her first Top Ten hit in the UK and her second Top Ten hit in the US after “Where Does My Heart Beat Now” released in the same year.

“Beauty and the Beast” also gave her her first Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal. The song became the lead single of her self-titled album released in the same year.

In 1993, Ms. Dion released her The Colour of My Love album which included one of her most familiar hits: “The Power of Love” (a remake of Jennifer Rush’s 1985 song). It became her first album to reach the top of the US, Canadian, and Australian album charts.

The succeeding years saw her release hit after hit including a remake of Eric Carmen’s “All By Myself” and “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now,” both of which are songs from her 1996 Falling Into You album. Another one of her signature hits, “My Heart Will Go On,” which was the love theme of James Cameron’s blockbuster film Titanic (1997) was included in her album Let’s Talk About Love.

“My Heart Will Go On” won her Academy and Golden Globe awards for Best Original Song, and two Grammy Awards: Best Female Pop Vocal Performance and Record of the Year.

After releasing 13 albums in the 1990s, Ms. Dion decided to step back, and came back after a three-year hiatus in 2002 with A New Day Has Come which featured songs telling about how she had matured as a woman and a mother. The album includes the titular single and “Goodbye’s (The Saddest Word).”

The following decades saw Ms. Dion doing what she does best, touring and singing. In 2010 she announced a three-year residency at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, entitled Celine.

In 2014, everything was either put on hold or canceled (as in the case of her Asia Tour) following the worsening of her husband’s health after the removal of a cancerous tumor.

Mr. Angelil died in 2016 and Ms. Dion resumed her Las Vegas residency a few months later.

The same year saw her presented with the Lifetime Achievement Icon Award by the Billboard Music Awards.

Beauty and the Beast came back into her life 26 years later — one of her most recent hits is “How Does a Moment Last Forever” from the live action version’s soundtrack released in 2017.

Ms. Dion has sold almost 250 million albums during over a three-decade career, earning five Grammy Awards, two Academy Awards, and seven American Music Awards in the process. She also received the Diamond Award at the World Music Awards in 2004 in recognition of her status as the best-selling female artist of all time.

Ms. Dion will be performing on July 19 at the SM Mall of Asia Arena. Tickets go on sale to the public beginning Jan. 18, 10 a.m., at www.smtickets.com, though members of TeamCeline (a Celine Dion fan club in Manila) will be able to purchase tickets in advance starting Jan. 16. Tickets range in price from P2,640 to P35,380. — Zsarlene B. Chua