Celine in German magazine "Stern" (04.10.07)

[OnlyCeline]

O Danke Julian... I'll buy this magazine later...

[stevo]

I hope the UK gets some articles like this...so this is where Davey got the pic for the sig. That new pic is AMAZING. Thank you for posting

[Snowhite]

THANK YOU! this photo is perfect.i like it!but what means the queen of kitsch?????????

[manilou]

I tried my very best to translate it accurately. Sorry for mistakes. I'm still learning

 

Here it is:

 

Stern issue Nr. 41 (4.10.07)

 

Céline Dion – Queen of Kitsch

 

'Just sing a little in the evening' , that’s how she calls it! For five years, five days a week Celine Dion sang and still sings in Las Vegas in her always sold-out show. Now the canadian nightingale comes back out of the exile in the desert, with a new CD and a new Woldtour.

 

It’s quite easy to like Celine Dion. One should try it more often. For example, if you have to wait for her three-quarters of an hour in the Penthouse of the ,Ceasars Palace' .Outside Las Vegas is burning under the sun, down there on the strip tourists take refuge from the heat in the air-conditioned dawn of the next casino. It’s a bright afternoon and the Diva just got up a short time ago. Her husband strolls around the corridors of this thundering Suite and grumbles ,Céline is on the way’. René Angelil is a midsize, bellied Teddybear with a white beard and the eyes of a gambler; He has won a quarter million dollars at the poker tables of this city. Peanuts, of course, compared to the 180 million his wife has earned with her singing in the last 5 years. Peanuts compared to the income 200 million sold albums brought in. Peanuts compared to the 120 million she earned with her perfum contracts; she doesn’t really like his gambling anyway. Angélil declares she is practically already in the room and nibbles some finger-food. Is the 39-year-old Dion the best singer in the world? Her show A new day, performed in the 95 million dollar Colosseum, especially built for her, has been sold out since day one – even though she has to fill 4000 seats in 200 shows a year and the cheapest tickest cost a hundred dollars, the most expensive ones 350 dollars. Lampooned by critics as the ,highest priest of corniness (cheesiness)' the woman with the five-octave voice defies these comments with her sheer success. A reporter from her homeland, who already decided to find Céline 'silly' and who, full of relish cited a scrotcher published in 'Vanity Fair' (her performance is a mixture of Pinoccio and Buffy the Vampire Slayer), got teary eyes, when Céline sang about love in her mother-tongue later that evening.

The Diva, finally arrives , she is a slender person, with a wispy mane and a thin face, that in good moments reminds you of the young Meryl Streep, in bad moments of the young Céline Dion. Her eye-lashes are so thick, you could block a street with them. And her rose eye shadow gleams all the way up to her hair. Las Vegas make-up; this woman has to go to work later. Often people assert she is anorexic – but who, four or five times a week, runs around on stage like she does will not gain any weight! When at the end of this year the curtain for 'Den Neuen Tag' (German for A new day) will have fallen, she will hurry right on: In feburary 2008 her world tour begins in Johannisburg. This tour will guide her around the world,100 cities on 5 continents. In June and July she will also come to Germany. Before that, she releases a new album this november. Not bad, for a woman, that asserts, that in the first place she is a mother and only 'goes out singing a little' in the evenings.

 

And it’s the truth! Diva is the last thing you associate with Celine Dion. Diva represents Grandezza and being bitchy, but if someone comes to late to an interview , because she played with her son, it represents more the housewive than the diva. The worldwide star with the miracle-voice in real life says earthbound things like : ,At home,my husband cares about politics’ or ´,Luckily my husband is older, so I don’t have to go out so much’ No doubt: Despite the sexy dress and the Pin-up make up Céline Dion, when talking, transforms into Doris Day. Family is the most important thing for her, she says she doesn’t care about glamour. At home she has no make-up on and wears only comfortable clothes, she affirms. And the success is only important for her, because her husband, who is also her manager since she was twelve years old and who, of course, is the love of her life, has earned it soo very much. In interviews in the past she announced, that she never slept with anyone but him. If you look at it that way she fits into Vegas like Paris Hilton into the Vatican. [/b]

When she started in 'Sin City' in March 2003 the music industry already believed in the grandious end of her career. Back then, Las Vegas wasn’t the place where you could find MTV-Stars. It’s only been like that for the last years and thanks to Dion’s success. Today Popstars like Chritina Aguilera, rapper and rocker adorn themselves with concerts in the city.

Celine became a trademark: At the airport you are welcomed by her meters high portrait and during the taxi drive you constantly stumble over her long legs on billboards. She doesn’t notice a lot of america’s biggest sin (Vegas) , though: With Angélil and her 7-year-old son, she lives half an hour away from the strip, in Lake Las Vegas. The house is, as well as the Colosseum, humidified, so that her vocal cords don’t suffer too much under the raw desert air. Five days a week, around six, she drives to Ceasars Palace and around half past eight the shows starts. At eleven, a helicopter brings the star back home. René-Charles is still up then and plays a little with mumy. Around two o’clock the lights go out. Day after day, year after year. It would be comprehensible, if Dion performed her show with cold routine. But cold is not her thing. Sometimes she cries on stage or during recording sessions, because she identifies so much with her songs. She even let’s old songs like the tearjerker My heart will go on,sound as if there was nothing more important in the world at that moment. In the best case, every listener get’s goosebumps. Her lovesongs are stylized dalliances, sex in major and minor, and insofar the anti-diva fits perfectly into Vegas. First, there is the delicat foreplay: the voice gets warm, then the chorus and more 'Wumm' the orchestration swells, then the highest state of thrill and finally she belts with everything she has in her lungs.

Celine sings since she was a little child . Father Adhemar played accordeon, her mother Th?se the fiddle and on weekends 'A.Dion et Ensemble' would perform in the village’s pub. The ensemble consisted of not less than 14 children. The youngest showed especial talent; with 5 years, she already sang at the wedding of her brother. Her father worked as a butcher, later as a mason, they had to save every penny. Celine was bad in school, because she had nothing else than singing in her head and when she was 12-years old her mother wrote a little song for her and they drove to the big city. In Montreal the music manager Réné Angélil , whose name Thérese had found on the back of her favourite CD, had his office. A man in a suite, as Céline noticed intimidated. The little thing with bad teeth had never before seen big citys or men in suites and now she stood there in the office of the nice stranger and started to sing. ,This is how everything started’ Céline says. , It was fate’. Angélil made sure, that she learned vocal techniques and proper English, had her teeth straighetned and made an athlete out of her. She attended an enormous number of performances, interrupted only by days where she wasn’t even allowed to speak,in order to preserve 'the instrument'. Today she deplores, that her education suffered from this. She is uncertain when talking about other things than her music. Her whole life was about stages, hotelrooms, recodingstudios and Angélil. After she won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1988 for Switzerland she kissed him for the first time. Even today, there’s still a vindicative undertone, when she talks about their relationship. I never felt any pressure from his side, he always behaved like a gentleman, she assures. 1994 they got married in Montreal. 1999 he got diagnosed with cancer. A big break in the story of Dions life , that can up to this point be told without any complications. Then, after numerous tries, the child, both wanted so much. The gutter press is besotted by the circumstances: in vitro fertilization with Angélils sperm, frozen before his chemotherapy. Céline doesn’t care about what others say. She is happy. She says she is no 'Clebrity', who yield’s to publicity. And the older she gets the less important these opinions are for her. Nearly 30 years she tried to please others: , Now I want to live my life’. She already sheduled 2 days of 'tourist program' on every station of her world tour. , I go to China, so I want to see the 'Mur Chinoise'! When she get’s excited, there are always French expressions falling into her charmant non-perfect English. , On my new Cd I only sing what I like’ she calls out happily. This means, not only songs, that actually sound like Celine Dion. ,Taking chances’ is edgier than most of her English 'cuddle' Cds, and the Rhythm and Blues song 'That’s just the woman in me' even sounds like sung by Janis Joplin herself, by a grown, tough woman, that finally grew into her voice. Yes, it’s easy not to like C?ne Dion. But quite often you simply forget why.

 

by Christine Kruttschnitt.

Edited October 6, 2007 at 02:57 PM by manilou

[Bell]

A good article but I don't like the photo. Her lips look too pale.

[Bellamy]

Celine earned 120 million with her perfum contract. No wonder they keep releasing new perfumes, and promo so well.

[manilou]

I love the last sentence

 

Yes, it’s easy not to like Céline Dion. But quite often you simply forget why.

[Bellamy]

I think this part is wrong, "a helicopter brings the star back home". Celine never takes helicopter back to home.

[manilou]

I think this part is wrong, "a helicopter brings the star back home". Celine never takes helicopter back to home.

 

When I translated I thought that,too. I think it was only a rumor. But then The Stern is one of the most accurate newspapers there is and they normaly check every detail...

[Bellamy]

"I go to China, so I want to see the 'Mur Chinoise'!" But can anyone tell me what's 'Mur Chinoise'?

[manilou]

Mur = Wall

Chinois = Chinese

 

She wants to see this big wall in your country

[Koolan]

never knew her perfume contracts are that much, even more than what she makes from the show.

 

bellied Teddybear with a white beard and the eyes of a gambler

 

Thx for translating.

[Bellamy]

Mur = Wall

Chinois = Chinese

 

She wants to see this big wall in your country

I know she can't wait to see the GREAT WALL!!!

[kevincheung410]

Mur = Wall

Chinois = Chinese

 

She wants to see this big wall in your country

 

I think "Le Grande muraille" is better.

He who has not been to the Great Wall is no true Han-Chinese.

[Tal]

she doesnt take a helicopter....that was a rumor when the show first started. and she also doesnt leave at 11...she leaves at like 1 or something. in her car

[manilou]

What I love soo much about this article is the comparison of Céline's songs and sex.

I had to laugh so hard reading this...

[Lisi_Dion]

Thank you sooo much for posting that wonderful article, Julian.... and thanks to manilou for discovering the article and translation!!!!(although I prefer to read the German one )

 

Celine is making so much promotion in Germany...... But why exactly in Germany and not Italy or China??????

[PrincesseJen]

Her lovesongs are stylized dalliances, sex in major and minor,

 

 

http://www.smileysets.us/temp/PRINCESS/blink.gif

[Javier_Natalio]

Why is there no color on her face? she looks good though.

[Love,]

Thanks for sharing this with us.

 

She does look kinda creepy though...

[firebird]

I've never seen so many Celine stereotypes/prejudices put into one article: the kitsch, the anorexia, the helicopter - amazing.

and I can't get the picture out of my head of René running around and nibbling on some food like an oversized hamster

[gmany]

Thanks so much for the translation!

[celinerific]

Oooo. I love the script font they used in the magazine.

[dj4celine]

OMG!! She's gonna visit the Great Wall in China next year

 

Bellamy, I don't know about you but when I come there I am gonna sit at the entrance of the wall for two straight days/nights for Celine's "tourist program"

 

Her lovesongs are stylized dalliances, sex in major and minor,

:mdr:

[PrincesseJen]

I've never seen so many Celine stereotypes/prejudices put into one article: the kitsch, the anorexia, the helicopter - amazing.

and I can't get the picture out of my head of René running around and nibbling on some food like an oversized hamster

OMG!! She's gonna visit the Great Wall in China next year

 

Bellamy, I don't know about you but when I come there I am gonna sit at the entrance of the wall for two straight days/nights for Celine's "tourist program"

 

http://i188.photobucket.com/albums/z30/Sarahj21230/Smileys/Smileys%201/sofunny.gif

[luvnceline5]

she doesnt take a helicopter....that was a rumor when the show first started. and she also doesnt leave at 11...she leaves at like 1 or something. in her car

 

 

not true.. only sometimes she leaves that late.. but when i was waiting to see her car pull out .. after her concert.. she left between 11:30 and midnight.. both times.. i waited there two seperate times... after i saw her.. just to see the car.. and wave!! hahaha even though she pry didn't see me.. lol.. but yeah.. not one am..

[WaterFromTheMoon]

I just bought that magazine and I have to say that in my opinion it wasn't very positive....therer were no mean things said about Céline but they could have said more good things they didn't even mention that she's the biggest selling female singer in the world but it's great to have an 4 sites article in such an important magazine as this one is in germany

[Istike]

I LOOOOOOVE ALL THESE PICS! And I really hope that this few picture is a very little part of the photoshoot!!!

[Der_Griffon]

Why the hell do they call her the Queen of Kitsch?

[WaterFromTheMoon]

I was wondering about that, too!