Word: dion
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...weeks, Dion will play Las Vegas in a show that dwarfs any comparison with Streisand or Presley and makes even the late Colonel's wildest financial fantasies seem tame. On March 25--the same day she releases a new album and appears in a CBS special--Dion will begin a three-year run at Caesars Palace in A New Day, a concert-dance-theater spectacular directed by former Cirque du Soleil mastermind Franco Dragone. In exchange for five shows a week, 40 weeks a year, Dion will get a reported $100 million plus 50% of the profits. She will also...
...Elvis personified the naughty Vegas of the 1970s, Dion is the perfect fit for the cleaned-up, family-friendly mecca of 2003. Her music and persona are scrupulously inoffensive--sometimes just bland. But her voice is a natural wonder of immense range and clarity, the kind of irony-free tourist attraction that the new Vegas adores. Most important, Dion has sold 150 million albums worldwide, making her the biggest female singer of all time and a true marquee draw. Still, even Dion realizes that her voice alone isn't worth a $200 ticket. "That's why this show...
...idea for A New Day came to Dion in 2000 when she saw O, Cirque du Soleil's bizarrely beautiful mime-gymnastics-diving show, at the Bellagio hotel. "The second it started," she says, "I was breathtaken. At the end I turned to Rene and said, 'If ever I do a concert again, this is what I want.'" Angelil, who loves his wife only slightly more than his personalized blackjack betting system, said it would be logistically impossible to mount such a complicated show profitably--unless, of course, she was willing to do it in Las Vegas permanently. "Sure enough...
After meeting with Dragone, O's director, and negotiating with three casinos and various producers, Angelil put together a deal at Caesars Palace. Then he and Dion stood back and let Dragone try to create a show out of Dion's songbook. "At first I did not know at all the repertoire of Celine," says Dragone. "I do not listen to this music. It's very pop-ish, so it is not so easy to find a tableau behind the songs. There is not a theme, except love of course...
...five months, Dragone, Dion, Michaels and 54 dancers holed up in La Louviere, Dragone's Belgian hometown, seeking inspiration. When they arrived in Las Vegas in December, only a few details of the show were decided. A New Day would feature a mix of 18 Dion songs and covers, among them such classic Vegas numbers as Fever and I've Got the World on a String. All the backdrops--including Times Square, a train station and a Florentine campo--would be broadcast on a giant $6 million LED screen. There would be a wordless Romeo and Juliet interlude, a tree...