Celine Dion was the youngest of 14 children born into a large, impoverished family on March 30, 1968 in Charlemagne, Quebec Canada. Dion is a singer, and also an occasional songwriter and actress. At age twelve, Dion collaborated with her mother and her brother Jacques to compose her first song, "Ce n'était qu'un rêve" ("It Was Only a Dream"). Dion became a teen star in the French-speaking world after her manager and future husband René Angélil, who after hearing thissong for the first time, mortgaged his home to finance her first record.
Dion first gained international recognition in the 1980s after she won the 1982 Yamaha
World Popular Song Festival
and the
1988 Eurovision Song Contest
. 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 her husband,
René Angélil
, she achieved worldwide success with several English and French albums, becoming one of the most successful artists in pop music. 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. 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
.
Dion's music has been influenced by genres ranging from pop, soul, and rock to gospel and classical, and while her releases have often received mixed critical reception, she is renowned for her technically skilled and powerful vocals. In 2004, after amassing 175 million in album sales, she was presented with the Chopard Diamond Award from the World Music Awards show for becoming the "Best-selling Female Artist in the World". In April 2007 Sony BMG announced that Celine Dion had sold more than 200 million albums worldwide. Celine Dion had 8 top five singles in the US and 4 of those reached number one on the charts.
In support of her latest English album Taking Chances which was released in November 2007, Celine began her current international Taking Chances Tour in February, 2008 and will continue until January, 2009. The year-long tour will visit 5 continents, 24 countries and 84 cities. Dion will perform 120 shows. Record setting sellouts occurred at stops around the world, including Montreal, South Africa, Australia and cities across the US and Britain.