Céline Dion wanted her first arena tour following her Las Vegas residency to feel just as intimate — and production designer Yves Aucoin knew what to do.
Yves Aucoin, Céline Dion’s production designer of 30 years, knew her Courage world tour needed to be a transition for the pop star when they sat down to brainstorm in January 2019. Her album of the same name debuted atop the Billboard 200, Dion’s first release to do so in 17 years, and her international trek -- which began last September, and is currently on hold due to the global coronavirus pandemic -- is her first since the close of her 16-year reign as Las Vegas’ residency queen. It’s also her first major tour following the 2016 death of René Angélil, her husband of 22 years and manager for 33.
Unlike Dion’s Vegas residencies — which combined grossed $681.3 million, according to Billboard Boxscore, and were held in a 4,100-seat theater — her Courage arena tour is for an audience five times that size. (Its first 19 shows grossed $33.2 million.) Aucoin jumped at the chance to incorporate big production elements, most notably a fleet of 104 drones that light up and fly around Dion during the climax of “My Heart Will Go On.”