No.1 IN OUR 13-DAY CELINE DION COUNTDOWN
For the next 13-nights of Celine Dion’s remaining performances at Caesars Palace, we’ll countdown her last days of a near five-year record-shattering historic run of A New Day. She starts those final shows tonight.
Each Luxe Life posting will include a new photo of the Canadian songbird along with a fresh story as Vegas prepares to say “au revoir” to a legend. The facts are incredibly astonishing:
Since its March ’03 opening night, some 3-million people have filled the 4,148 seats in the Colosseum theater that was built specially for her at a cost of $95-million. Celine has ratcheted up some $500-million at the box office at the rate of about $562,000 for each of her more than 700 shows. She has donated some $3.5 million to charity from special fund-raising performances at the Colosseum which she keeps at 55% humidity to protect her voice. Celine is lit up by more than 200 moving lights nightly. She makes six costume changes nightly while her initial cast of 48 dancers from ten different countries selected from 1,500 auditions changes five times! From Celine herself to box office staff, her show employs more than 350 people including the 70 dancers and musicians.
Tickets for the final Dec 15 show at up to $1,000 apiece are already sold out, with many showbiz stars expected to attend. I’m told she will make a short farewell speech from the stage, but there will be no blow-out festive gala celebration. Celine and manager husband, Renee Angelil already threw that for cast members, family and friends as a secret masquerade party earlier in the fall.
As she gets ready to celebrate her 40th birthday next Spring, Celine sets off on a year-long world tour on February 14 starting out in South Africa and winding up back here in Canada and the US next January after stops in Australia and throughout Europe and Asia. Stepping into her shoes and onto her stage as of February will be Bette Midler and, if my insider secrets are true, also superstar Cher!
“I know I am going to be very nervous and very sad, but at the same time I am very happy at what we have accomplished here the past five-years,” says Celine. “It’s going to be a roller coaster of emotions. For five years I’ve been protected and focused on my Vegas surroundings, my home, my son, my dressing room. So going out on the international tour is like doing show-business again for the first time in my life. It seems like the time has flown by, so we now cherish every moment, every show, as the end is coming soon. The countdown gives us a little more anticipation and nervous energy.”
Tomorrow with 12-performances to go, we’ll run the entire timeline of Celine’s near-unbelievable Vegas residency, and find out just which Strip show her six-year-old son, Rene Charles, who has been raised his entire life here in Lake Las Vegas, votes no.1.