She could have picked up where she left off, and most people would have been fine with that. Or at least understanding.
After all, Celine Dion shocked the world a little more than a year ago, when she announced a leave of absence from show business — including more than 40 scheduled dates at Caesars Palace — to devote her attention to husband-manager Rene Angelil's battle with throat cancer (and stress-related issues with her own voice).
Angelil's battle continues. In June, Dion told reporters the 73-year-old was hospitalized in Boston. But the singer and her show?
"As soon as I got here I felt it," director Ken Ehrlich said last week. "You certainly sense it in the hotel. You put your laminate on and walk around and people come up and talk to you. Especially the staff. There's an excitement ... 'Celine's back.' "
The Canadian superstar was set to reopen Thursday at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace, unveiling a revised and updated showcase. Fans got the first hint the material itself would change when word broke in March that Dion had parted company with Claude "Mego" Lemay, the musical director who had worked with the 47-year-old singer since she was an 18-year-old unknown in Canada.
Ehrlich hasn't known her quite as long; only as long as most U.S. fans have been aware of her. His main gig is producing the annual Grammy Awards broadcast, and he staged her breakout "Beauty and the Beast" duet with Peabo Bryson on the broadcast in 1992.
The director said it was not his place to address the departure of Lemay and three other longtime band members, but he was happy to speak in spoiler-free terms about what awaits fans.
After all, it's not just Dion who returns.
"As we all know, Celine fans come back," Ehrlich says. The singer is one of the city's destination headliners; fans book vacations based on when she will be on the Strip. Repeat business "in a way kind of continues to signal her ability to change and shift with the times."
"If I had to put one line to what the differences might be, this show in a way, it's probably a little more up," Ehrlich adds. "A couple of things in the show were really down, personal moments, but they've been replaced by 'up' personal moments."
The family-photo montage set to Billy Joel's "Lullabye (Goodnight My Angel)" has been given an understandable rest, given the life drama playing out beyond the stage. Other songs outside Dion's catalog of hits — including the show-opening cover of Journey's "Open Arms" — also were considered fair game for swapping out.
But the new show still furthers the long-range vision of expanding the singer's appeal beyond her fading era of pop hits when she returned to Caesars Palace in 2011, to launch more than 200 shows. It was Ehrlich who coaxed her into scatting the Ella Fitzgerald classic "(If You Can't Sing it) You'll Have to Swing It (Mr. Paganini)" and tackling a medley of James Bond movie themes.
The veteran TV producer returned to the Colosseum for his second live diva showcase when he helmed Mariah Carey's "No. 1 to Infinity." But Carey set off in the polar opposite direction, rewarding her career fans by lining up her 18 No. 1 hits, in chronological order.
"They have inner strength, both of them, and they both have vulnerability," Ehrlich says of his two divas. "With Celine, I think she was just ready and she wanted to do different things. I think with Mariah, there was kind of this comfort factor with the hits. She had a vision."
(When he did suggest opening out the show, or at least rearranging the order of the hits, "(Carey) shook her finger at me and said, 'That's not what we're here for, Ken.' ")
Compared to many an overstuffed diva showcase — including Dion's first Las Vegas effort, "A New Day" — the most recent show kept the music and song choices as the focus of attention rather than the costume changes.
That may be in part because Ehrlich sees a musical side of her that's often lost in her celebrity.
"She loves riffing," he says. During rehearsals, "She'll go into a song that has nothing to do with the show. She hears a phrase in the song we're rehearsing and starts playing with that. In the past, those have turned into things that have been done in her shows.
"There's a great sense of spontaneity, and she probably as much as any artist that I've worked with wants to keep things fresh."
Dion was so happy to be a first-time mother when her Colosseum career began in 2003 that in her interviews, the actual show sounded like an afterthought; creative decisions seemed like they were left to Angelil and others.
Ehrlich says he doesn't get that impression now. "We know this is a tough time for her but it's remarkable, this woman — and I've seen it time after time — she has incredible resolve. In a way, she wants to be the team leader. I've seen it in the past and I see it now," he says.
"It's like somewhere down deep she knows that at the end of the day, people are looking at her, the rest of us working with her on the show. And her strength radiates. That's what I'm seeing in the last couple of days of watching her come in, and see the musicians for the first time in a while and start working with new people.
"She's really something. She's a very special person."
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