CELINE’S NEW SHOW: HOW IT HAPPENED

Celine Dion fans can thank Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones for sweeping upgrades to her new Las Vegas show.

It was a case of keeping up with the Joneses, said John Meglen, president of entertainment giant AEG Live!, co-producers of Dion’s upcoming show at Caesars Palace.

During separate interviews with Vegas Confidential, Meglen and Rene Angelil, Dion’s husband and manager, revealed how the new Vegas show was created.

There will be technology “that no one has seen before,” said Meglen. Longtime Grammys director Ken Ehrlich came on board with changes that “are really featuring Celine.”

“We have to have things that no one has seen before. We have to raise the bar again,” said Meglen. “And marrying the technology in a way that it supports the sophistication of the class of Celine and an orchestra, that’s the challenge.

“The challenge is things can get too technical, they can get too flashy. You don’t want to rely on technology. You want to use the newest and the greatest technology, but it always has to be in a position of enhancing Celine’s performance."

So what does that mean as far as the giant LED screen?

“The video is getting bigger," said Meglen. "We are adding to it, in different ways. We’re adding more video.”

He said Jones came to a Celine show “and put up that giant screen in Cowboys Stadium so we now have to up Jerry Jones.”

With Franco Dragone, who directed Dion’s first show, “there was a balance between Celine and Franco Dragone,” said Meglen.

“What Ken Ehrlich brings to the table is really shining the star of Celine.”

“And that’s part of the reason why Ken Ehrlich is so important because no one knows Celine and Rene as well as Ken Ehrlich, and he has directed about every special she has ever done. She is close with him, not just professionally, but personally so he’s really going to know how to bring that side of Celine out in many ways much more than Franco Dragone did.”

As reported here several months ago, one of the bigger changes will be a full 31-piece orchestra that will probably grow, Meglen said, by Dion’s March 15 opening.

“We planned for that,” he said. “We have the contingency for that. It needs to be what it needs to be at the end of the day. And you can not let finances take away from that. You can’t let that effect the creative process.”

Angelil said the original plan was to bring the tour show to Las Vegas for Dion’s next run, but that would have meant many would have already seen it.

“But halfway through the tour we decided to go with a whole new show,” said Angelil, in a telephone interview Thursday from his Lake Las Vegas home.

A factor in that decision was the excitement created when Dion teamed up with a 31-piece orchestra for the 400th anniversary celebration of Quebec City.

After a massive crowd of 250,000 showed up for the event, the buzz reverberated for many months.

“For an artist,” said Angelil, “there’s nothing better than working with an orchestra.”

And Ehrlich directed three Celine specials for CBS, “so we had a very close relationship.”

Strong pre-sales point to another successful run, Meglen said, even in the face of a lingering recession.

“Fifty four shows are on sale, almost all sold out. We have some, the first couple runs are just about clean and then we get into the June run where we have more seats available. There’s still some seats available but it’s getting very scarce," he said.

“We’re 20 percent ahead of our sales, you know, this many days out from the first performance as we were when we opened ‘A New Day.’

“It’s been a tough couple years here. The Colosseum has done well. It did not do anywhere near as great as it did when Celine was here and we were also here in the boom years.

“To me one of the most important things here, she’s coming back when we need her the most.

“A comment I’ve been making and I’ll make it out there today, is that Celine has been employing -- because of what she created here -- we’ve been employing more than 200 people here for (almost) 10 years in the Colosseum. Over 100 of them are still working here today. That’s 200 jobs for 200 families in a time like this.

“I think it’s so important to acknowledge that right now. She’s coming back in a time period when the town needs the help. It’s almost like she’s coming in to help the town.”

--NORM CLARKE, Vegas Confidential