Celine Dion wowed thousands of adoring fans for the opening day of the British Summer Time festival in London’s Hyde Park, performing well-known hits spanning more than three decades in the music business.
The Canadian chart-topper was the headline act for the first of five major concerts in the capital, a month after closing her second Las Vegas residency at the famous Caesars Palace hotel.
Attendees cheered as the 51-year-old launched with Jennifer Rush’s The Power Of Love, which she covered in 1993.
The Grammy Award winner also took to the stage with titles including I’m Alive, Because You Love Me, Think Twice and All By Myself.
“We are so excited to be with you this evening in beautiful Hyde Park and you are looking incredible,” she told the crowds.
“You know, we’ve always loved coming to the UK and doing shows here – but this is extra, extra special for us tonight.”
The singer concluded her show visibly emotional as she performed Titanic soundtrack My Heart Will Go On, before calling for peace and harmony as she finished with John Lennon’s Imagine.
“If I may, I would love to leave with this message of peace and harmony in the best way that I can,” she said.
Dion, who is preparing for the release of a new album in November and will embark on her Courage World Tour from September, performed after Josh Groban, Claire Richards, Jazz Morley, The Adelaides, Alice Chater and Kerri Watt.
Her set also consisted of cover performances of Prince’s Kiss and Purple Rain, Tina Turner hit River Deep, Mountain High, as well as one of her French singles Pour Que Tu M’Aimes Encore.
Stevie Wonder will headline the show on Saturday, supported by Lionel Richie, Lianne La Havas and Corinne Bailey Rae, ahead of Barbra Streisand on Sunday, Florence + The Machine on July 13, and Robbie Williams on July 14.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article