Chanteuse Celine fills the vastness with her ballads
By Tony O'Brien
CELINE Dion must have magical powers well beyond her vocal chords
Just 24 hours before she took the stage at Lansdowne Road last night, the weather outlook for her open-air show was distinctly damp and foggy.
Superstar
Celine Dion in action during her open air concert in Lansdown Road.
Photo by Ronan Lang.
But yesterday afternoon,
as if on cue, the sun broke through much to the delight of the 35,000
fans who came to see the French-Canadian singer. But the kind of fans
that Dion attracts would probably have cared little if the evening was
somewhat gloomy weatherwise because for them the 28-year-old superstar
brings her own ray of sunshine to a performance. Celine, who has clocked
up worldwide album sales of 50m, sold out two nights at the Point last
November, leaving many disappointed fans ticketless. Even so, the cynics
thought she would never fill the vastness of Lansdowne Road. But she did.
And not only in terms of bums on seats but, more importantly, in terms
of her physical and musical presence reaching out to everyone of those
fans from the huge stage at Havelock Square end of the famous rugby stadium.
It's not easy for a female solo performer at any time, it is even more
difficult in a big scale show like this, but Dion held the vast crowd
in the palm of her hand from beginning to end. If there was one complaint
about last night's show, it was that the sound could have been louder.
As a result, to these ears it lacked the impact of the Point gig.
Celine dashed about the stage delivering all her hits looking fetching
in a figure-hugging fawn-coloured suit. She is the master of the power
ballad and proved it again and again with big hits like The Power
of Love, It's All Coming Back To Me, Think Twice and All
By Myself.
Even competing with the noise of the nearby DART and the bright evening
sky, Dion more than ably demonstrated why she is one of the world's top
female vocalists. And she paid tribute to her Irish fans telling them
that even though she had been on tour for three years, she wanted to come
back to one of her favourite cities, Dublin.
She proved that further by using the St. Mary of the Angels Gospel Choir from Dublin's Church Street for two numbers towards the end of the show.