Dion has grown into her diverse new Colosseum showcase

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Two things always seemed to be a big problem for Celine Dion:

1. Most of her music, at least the English-language pop, was pretty crappy.

2. She wasn’t really 40 yet.

Both of those issues are happily cured in the singer’s return to Caesars Palace.

The bookends — the first and last 20 minutes or so — cover essential ground, familiar to loyals and devotees of her previous Colosseum showcase. The surprising part comes in the middle, when the star ventures off the beaten path of her hits to offer a song list so diverse there’s something for everyone to like, from Ella Fitzgerald to Michael Jackson.

The singer, who turns 43 on March 30, certainly has reached that place where she deserves to do whatever she wants — even a video duet with a projected image of herself. ("That girl doesn’t stop … I don’t know how he lives with her," she jokes later.)

Dion now wears a sequined ball gown as well as she does the slightest of age lines revealed in giant screen close-ups. How many other stars look better in their 40s than in the videos of their 20s projected on panels right beside them?

Dion always managed to connect with fans through her own effusive charm, whether she was being marketed as a chest-thumping pop diva or the androgynous figure in suspenders and slicked-back hair who opened "A New Day" in 2003.

Now that personality is unobstructed. After the big reveal of an endless white scrim plummeting to the massive stage, the tasteful production by Grammy Awards director Ken Ehrlich serves more to reinforce the musicality of the effort. The production is full of little surprises, but largely aims to scale down the ridiculously wide Colosseum stage; side screens built into the audience create an enveloping illusion of intimacy.

The main extravagance is a 31-piece orchestra, an old-fashioned thrill that’s new to anyone who hasn’t heard the opening jolt of the James Bond theme "Goldfinger" played by such a massive ensemble — or ever played live at all, for that matter.

This corps of musicians, not video (which is actually the shoddiest element of the production), covers the star’s costume changes with cool moments, such as three cellists doing a Kronos Quartet-style Michael Jackson medley.

It’s easy to assume it’s all motivated by the producers’ trying to broaden Dion’s appeal and further bolster an expensive ticket in hard times. If so, fence-sitters should know the first 20 minutes follow concert-bio protocol, with archival video rolling to her breakthrough hit, "Where Does My Heart Beat Now," and a double whammy of over-the-topness in "It’s All Coming Back to Me Now" and "The Power of Love."

Those who don’t declare themselves die-hards also will be challenged not to be moved by home videos of the singer’s first son and her new twin boys during Billy Joel’s "Lullabye (Goodnight My Angel)."

But you can turn the logic around and say Dion and her creators aren’t so much trying to win new fans as keep her old ones on board for the journey. "Maturity is a wonderful thing," she told reporters after the show. "What’s great about music is that at 20 you can sing certain things and at 30 others and at 40, certainly, understand different emotions."

The Colosseum’s perfect acoustics lay bare the fact that this is still a voice in transition. Dion’s instrument is a zero-to-60 sports car meant to blow out the acoustics of a hockey arena, and she often struggles to find the more delicate middle. You hear this literally within one word of the Eric Carmen chestnut "All By Myself": Half the word is a bullhorn — "MY" — while "self" is a whisper.

Fans stand up and cheer the power of the drawn-out, climactic "Anym-o-o-o-re." Will they also cheer her attempt to embrace an older generation’s School of Effortless: "(You’ll Have to Swing It) Mr. Paganini"? The tune popularized by Fitzgerald is a transitional challenge that lets her tackle both the lighter side of jazz singing as well as its vocal scat histrionics.

Dion’s English-as-a-Second-Language phrasing still comes through on the trio of Bond themes, or when things slow to a hush for Janis Ian’s "At Seventeen." French-speaking fans are the ones rewarded with what is clearly the show’s emotional highlight for the singer: A tear runs down her face during the Jacques Brell song "Ne Me Quitte Pas" ("If You Go Away"). "It’s hard for me to sing," she told the audience.

If this three-year showcase represents the mature Celine, hopefully a return trip in a year or so will reveal that the journey continues; that, like the boys she’s so proud of, she hasn’t stopped growing.

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.