Celine Dion’s love story is reexamined years later

Celine Dionthe love story with René Angélil has long been defined as a matter of dedication, loyalty and destiny.

However, years after his death, a new memoir, “It’s All Coming Back To Me,” reopens deeply uncomfortable questions about how their relationship truly began and how much control Angélil had over his personal life and career.

Written by a man who spent more than two decades at their side, the revelations shed new light on a marriage that shaped Dion’s entire adult life.

The late Angélil set strict conditions before his longtime collaborator Vito Luprano could publish a memoir about their years together.

The singer requested that the manuscript be shared with Celine Dion before its release and that it not be published until after her death.

Angélil died in January 2016 of throat cancer, five years after that conversation, and Luprano insists he honored both requests.

Luprano, who signed Dion’s first record label deal in 1986, had an unusually close view.

“I was 30 when I met Céline,” he wrote according to the Daily Mail. “She was 17. We signed her when she turned 18.”

For 23 years, he says, he was almost constantly present, writing: “Almost every day for 23 years, I was in the same rooms as Céline and René. »

Although Luprano served as Dion’s executive producer for 21 albums, his relationship with Angélil was often strained, marked by conflicts over control and ambition, and ended abruptly in 2010.

“I needed closure, but René never gave it to me,” Luprano said, explaining why the memoir became a personal account.

Much has already been said about the 26-year age gap between Céline Dion and René Angélil.

They met when she was 12 and he was 38, the music producer mortgaging his house to finance his first album.

Their romance was publicly acknowledged when she was 19 and he was 45, but Luprano says emotional and physical boundaries blurred much earlier.

“There were signs as early as 1987, when Céline was 17,” he wrote.

He described “shared glances, lingering glances, the way their chemistry changes the room,” adding that these moments were “too intimate to be anything other than love.”

In the studio, he recalled that the “My Heart Will Go On” hitmaker looked adoringly at Angélil in a way that belied a platonic artist-manager relationship.

Luprano also claims that Angélil took deliberate steps to hide their closeness. During his travels, he reportedly booked suites at the Dion Hotel with connecting rooms.

“A place where they could come and go at night without anyone knowing,” he said. Even when Angélil insisted the relationship was platonic, Luprano says her unease never went away.

When the romance finally surfaced publicly, Luprano likened it to finding out “my adult brother was sleeping with the girl next door, my sister.”

In his memoir, Luprano made it clear that he never doubted the depth of Dion’s feelings. He described her as hopelessly in love.

He nevertheless admitted to questioning the purity of Angélil’s motives, particularly after a conversation early in Dion’s career that left a lasting impression.

During a tense trip, Angélil recounted his fallout with his former client Ginette Reno, a French-Canadian singer he managed in the 1970s.

According to Luprano, the 73-year-old was still furious decades later. “’She was great and we were going places, but within a few months I lost everything,’” Angélil said.

Reno had left him professionally after falling in love, which he considered a betrayal. Luprano wrote that Dion’s husband then made a chilling remark: “But now I have Celine.” »

He interpreted it as a statement of control. According to Luprano, Angélil saw Dion as a second chance, writing: “Céline was his second chance, and he wasn’t going to waste it.” »

This mindset, he suggests, shaped the way the late singer handled both her career and her emotional world.

Even after Céline Dion and René Angélil married in 1994 and had three children, Luprano says the dynamic never completely changed.

He highlighted how rare it was for the singer to be alone with someone without her husband present.

“In all these years, believe it or not, Céline had never asked to share a meal or a coffee with me,” he wrote. “We all knew that unless René was present, Céline was off-limits.”

One of the most disturbing anecdotes concerns the recording of “All By Myself”.

On the morning of the session, Angélil unexpectedly declared that he would not be present and asked Luprano to take Dion instead. Luprano found this unusual, noting that Angélil “never let personal matters interfere with business.”