Dion during her Taking Chances Tour concert in Bell Centre, Montreal, on 19 August 2008.

Céline Dion (born in 1968) is a Canadian singer. Born into a large poverty-stricken family from Charlemagne, Quebec, Dion emerged as a teen star in the French-speaking world after her manager and future husband René Angélil mortgaged his home to finance her first record. In 1990 she released the English-language album Unison, establishing herself as a viable pop artist in North America and other English-speaking areas of the world.

Dion first gained international recognition in the 1980s by winning both the 1982 Yamaha World Popular Song Festival and the 1988 Eurovision Song Contest where she represented Switzerland. Following a series of French albums in the early 1980s, she signed on to CBS Records Canada in 1986. During the 1990s, with the help of Angélil, she achieved worldwide fame after signing with Epic Records and releasing several English albums along with additional French albums, becoming one of the most successful artists in pop music history. However, in 1999 at the height of her success, Dion announced a hiatus from entertainment in order to start a family and spend time with her husband, who had been diagnosed with cancer. She returned to the top of pop music 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, Paradise, Nevada.

Dion's music has been influenced by genres ranging from rock and R&B to gospel and classical. Her recordings are mainly in French and English, although she also sings in Spanish, Italian, German, Latin, Japanese and Mandarin Chinese. While her releases have often received mixed critical reception, she is renowned for her technically skilled and powerful vocals. Dion has won five Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year for Falling Into You and Record of the Year for My Heart Will Go On. She is the best-selling Canadian artist of all time, the second best-selling female artist in the US during the Nielsen SoundScan era, with her albums Falling Into You and Let's Talk About Love both certified Diamond in the US, and is the only female artist to have two singles sell more than a million copies in the UK. In addition, her 1995 album D'eux, is the best-selling French-language album of all time. In 2004, after surpassing 175 million in album sales worldwide, she was presented with the Chopard Diamond Award at the World Music Awards for becoming the best-selling female artist of all time. According to Sony Music Entertainment, Dion has sold over 220 million albums worldwide.

At the age of five the young Céline made her first public appearance at her brother Michel's wedding.

At age 12, 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"). Her brother Michel sent the recording to music manager René Angélil who was moved to tears by Dion's voice, and decided to make her a star. In 1981, he mortgaged his home to fund her first record, La voix du bon Dieu ("The Voice of the Good God"), which later became a local number-one hit and made Dion an instant star in Quebec.

In 1993, Dion announced her feelings for her manager by declaring him "the colour of love" in the dedication section of her third English-language album The Colour of My Love. However, instead of criticizing their relationship as Dion had feared, fans embraced the couple. Eventually, Angélil and Dion married in an extravagant wedding ceremony in December 1994, which was broadcast live on Canadian television.

On a cultural level, Dion is credited for introducing francophone music to many non-francophone countries around the globe. Her albums D'eux and S'il suffisait d'aimer remain the best selling francophone albums in history gaining unprecedented success in non-Francophone markets such as the United Kingdom, Poland, Netherlands, Portugal, Greece, Austria, Japan and New Zealand.

Les Productions Feeling Inc., also known as Feeling Inc. or just Feeling, is an artist management company based in Laval, Quebec, Canada and owned by Dion and her husband and manager, Rene Angelil. Dion is also founder of Nickels Restaurant food chain. Dion and her husband also own Le Mirage Golf Club and Schwartz's Restaurant. In association with Andre Agassi, Steffi Graf and Shaquille O'Neal she opened a popular night club called Pure, located at Caesars Palace.

In 2007, Dion was ranked by Forbes as the 5th richest woman in entertainment with an estimated net worth of US$250 million.

Dion has actively supported many charity organizations, worldwide. She has promoted the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation (CCFF) since 1982, and became the foundation's National Celebrity Patron in 1993.

Since 2004, she is involved, alongside husband René Angelil, with the Québec gay community by supporting the publication of health and HIV prevention materials in Gay Globe Magazine, owned by journalist Roger-Luc Chayer.

In May 2000, Dion had two small operations at a fertility clinic in New York to improve her chances of conceiving, after deciding to use in-vitro fertilisation after years of failed attempts to conceive. Their first son, René-Charles Angelil, was born on 25 January 2001. In May 2010, Angelil announced that Dion was 14 weeks pregnant with twins after a sixth treatment of in-vitro fertilisation. On Saturday, 23 October 2010, at 11:11 and 11:12 am respectively, at St. Mary's Medical Center in West Palm Beach, Florida, Dion, by Caesarean section, gave birth to two healthy fraternal twins. The twins were named Eddy, after Dion's favorite Algerian songwriter Eddy Marnay who also produced Dion's first five albums, and Nelson, after former South African President Nelson Mandela. Dion appeared with her newborn sons on the cover of the December 9, 2010 issue of the Canadian edition of Hello! magazine.

Source and more information:
Wikipedia article Celine Dion

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