Watch Celine Dion dedicate her Miami concert to her mom who just died at 92
Celine Dion, a true pro, proved the adage, “the show must go on,” when she dedicated her two Miami concerts to her mother who died Friday morning.
Thérèse Tanguay Dion died in Montreal at age 92. She had 14 children — the pop superstar was her youngest.
On Friday, the first night of her Courage Tour in Miami, at downtown’s AmericanAirlines Arena, Dion dedicated the concert to “my mother, my hero” and sang a heartfelt and emotional rendition of “Over the Rainbow” for her mom. The “Wizard of Oz” song replaced her cover of John Lennon’s “Imagine” that she had been performing in previous shows.
Saturday, after opening with her hits “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” and “That’s the Way It Is,” Dion took a few moments to tell her Miami audience how she was holding up.
“I want you to know that I’m OK,” she said. Her mother, she said, had been ill for quite some time.
“We knew she’d be leaving us soon. So all of my brothers and sisters — and me — went to Montreal to be with her before she passed. We are convinced that mom waited for us to be all together before departing,” Dion told her audience.
“My mom, she loved to laugh and loved to dance and loved to sing,” Dion added.
In fact, Dion noted that her mother wrote her her first song when Dion was just a little girl. Thérèse Tanguay Dion also hosted her own cooking show on the French language network TVA.
The Canada-born Dion, 51, has been performing since she was 12. She became a worldwide superstar when she started singing in English with 1990’s “Unison” album and her rendition of the 1997 “Titanic” theme song, “My Heart Will Go On,” is one of the most recognizable pop hits of the last 25 years.
“Music was such an important part of all our family’s lives,” Dion said Saturday at the AAA in tribute. She then made a request of her audience.
“I want you to know one of her biggest joys was to see the audiences sing and dance at my shows — same thing for my dad. So you know what? Let’s raise the roof. Are you ready to have a good time, Miami?”
The minute-long ovation answered that question.
A decade earlier, in February 2010, Dion brought her mother and family — including her husband René Angélil who died in 2016 at 73 — to the Regal South Beach movie theater to host the premiere of her concert film, “Celine: Through the Eyes of the World.”
This story was originally published January 21, 2020 at 2:16 PM.
