Céline Dion returned to the stage on Saturday night (Sept. 12) after six years away, opening her 26-date Paris residency at the Plenitude Arena in Nanterre. The crowd of 30,000 was the first of more than 480,000 total across Dion’s first 16 dates staged this autumn, with every ticket bought within hours of the sale. The access lottery drew more than nine million people.

Dion hadn’t headlined a concert since publicly sharing her diagnosis of stiff-person syndrome. On Saturday she leaned on the songs that made her a phenomenon in France, a good number of them pulled from D’eux, the Jean-Jacques Goldman-written album that remains the best-selling French-language record ever made. The English blockbusters were there, too. The staging stayed spare on purpose: a large set, no pyrotechnics, everything built to keep the focus on her voice.

The show started 47 minutes late and ran to 11:14 p.m. local time, close to two and a half hours. She opened in tears on “On Ne Change Pas,” dropped into a mirror-ball disco stretch partway through, sang the opera aria “La Wally” under falling snow, and pulled a gospel choir around her before the “Pour Que Tu M’aimes Encore” sing-along everyone was waiting for. She debuted “Dansons,” her 2026 Goldman-written comeback single, and took “All by Myself” a cappella.

Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Aya Nakamura and Thomas Pesquet were among the guests in the room.

The night’s biggest gamble was the turn onto the dance floor. “I Feel Love,” “Sweet Dreams” and a reworked “I’m Alive” showed a looser, more playful Dion than the balladeer many had come expecting.

Thinking about catching the Paris residency? Here’s Dion’s full setlist from opening night.