The singer Céline Dion has announced the cancellation of a quarantine of concerts throughout Europe that she was to carry out until well into 2024 as part of the 'Courage world Tour'. This is a hard blow to the plans of the French-Canadian artist, who announced last December that she suffers from stiff person syndrome, a nervous system disease that causes uncontrollable muscle spasms, affecting both her motor skills and to the voice.
"I am very sorry to disappoint you again," says the 55-year-old singer and author of hits such as I'm alive or My heart will go on in a statement. "I work hard to get my strength back, but going on tour is hard even when you're 100%." Dion argues that it would not have been fair for her to postpone the concerts, which has led her to cancel them "until I'm really well enough to get back on stage."
The singer had twenty concerts scheduled in the second half of the year, and as many as from March 2024, none of them in Spain. This is a tour announced in 2019 to promote the album Courage, the 14th by a singer who has sold more than 200 million records throughout her career. It was the first world tour in more than 10 years, starting in Quebec in September 2019 and being suspended in March 2020 due to the pandemic after performing 52 concerts in North America.
The tour was to resume in June 2021, but the planned concerts did not take place, announcing then that the artist was suffering from muscle spasms. It was not until December 2022 that the exact disease that the Oscar winner for the Titanic soundtrack is suffering from was revealed.
Stiff person syndrome "causes episodes of stiffness and muscle spasms of the muscles of the trunk, arms, and legs," according to the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences in the United States. It is believed to be an autoimmune disease associated with other diseases such as diabetes, thyroiditis or anemia.
Céline Dion, one of the best-selling artists of all time and winner of five Grammys, had resumed her musical career after overcoming the death of her husband Angélil and her brother, Daniel Dion, in 2016, a blow that separated her for three years of the stage
