In a tribute to the victims of last week’s Paris attacks, Celine Dion performed Edith Piaf’s Hymne à L’amour at the American Music Awards on Sunday night.
Accompanied by a live orchestra, Dion sang in French as images of Paris monuments and tributes left following the attacks were projected behind her.
Actor Jared Leto introduced Celine Dion, and told the audience he and his band 30 Seconds to Mars had performed at the Bataclan just a few months ago. Calling it a “horrific and senseless tragedy”, he named friends and colleagues of his who had been at the Bataclan that night, one of whom, Thomas Ayad, was killed.
Leto also quoted a note written by Antoine Leiris, a French journalist whose wife was killed at the Bataclan concert hall.
In a note posted to Facebook titled “You will not have my hatred”, Leiris wrote: “So no, I will not give you the satisfaction of hating you. You want it, but to respond to hatred with anger would be to give in to the same ignorance that made you what you are.”
Urging peace, Leto said the whole world, including France, Syria, Russia, Mali, the Middle East and the US, all mattered. Before turning over the stage to Dion, he switched the subject of immigration, an issue even more hotly contested in the wake of the attacks.
“Many of us here are the sons and the daughters of immigrants,” Leto continued, noting Steve Jobs and President Barack Obama.
Hymne à L’amour was written by the French singer Edith Piaf in 1949 in dedication to her lover Marcel Cerdan, the French boxer who died in a plane crash on his way to New York from Paris.
“We felt it was important to show our solidarity in light of the recent events in Paris and all around the world,” AMA producer Larry Klein said in a statement, reported to Billboard. “Celine’s performance will help us express our feelings through song, when words do not suffice.”
