Angelil stories flow at memorial

Rene Angelil was represented by his hand and voice at a memorial celebration Wednesday for the husband and career-long manager of Celine Dion.

Anyone who went onstage at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace first touched a gold sculpture of Angelil's outstretched left hand, commissioned after the birth of their son Rene-Charles in 2001. Imitating his raspy whisper of a voice was then optional.

"We love telling stories about Rene," said John Meglen, the AEG Live executive who closed the deal for Dion to be the Colosseum's resident headliner starting in 2003. "We all have our Rene voices."

Dion sat onstage with Rene-Charles and Angelil's grown children, listening to the recollections from concert, recording and casino industry executives. The singer, wearing a shoulderless black dress, rose from an armchair to thank and hug each speaker.

As the last speaker, Dion noted the Colosseum was "home away from home," and yet she wasn't "quite sure how strong I feel."

But she said that "the love of my life ... would be so happy to know we are all here together telling stories, sharing memories, playing some of his favorite music. And especiallly in this beautiful theater which many years ago was one of his dreams come true."

"I feel the love in this room," she added. "I feel the strength."

Caesars Palace President Gary Selesner noted Angelil was "a little superstitious" and liked to knock on wood at any mention of the word "successful." Problem was, Selesner had nothing made out of wood in his office until one day "a gift arrived at my office ... a beautiful solid wooden box."

"Now there's a picture of Rene in that box," Selesner added.

Meglen recalled the skepticism of the original deal, which called for Dion to perform almost 200 shows a year (later curbed back) at record-setting ticket prices. "Nobody had ever done this before. ... He liked those odds. He knew his hand," Meglen said of the manager known for his poker skills.

"It began as a business deal, but it became so much more," Meglen said.

Meglen said Angelil was "a master of the presentation," and the more lavish the breakfast spread, the more serious the stakes of the meeting would be. When one such meeting in California at the Ritz Carlton was fully catered, it was to pitch the 110-foot screen that wrapped the stage.

"What just happened?" Meglen recalled his AEG boss Tim Leiweke asking.

"We just bought a video screen."

"How much?"

"Eight million."

"What did we get out of it?"

"Another year."

"But the show hasn't even opened!"

Dion wiped dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief at some points, but laughed out loud at others, such as when her current show's director Ken Ehrlich took pride in claiming he was "the first person to take Rene to the In-N-Out drive-thru."

And she laughed so hard she slapped her at her knee when former Caesars President Mark Juliano recalled Angelil taking Rene-Charles out for a morning ritual of Krispy Kremes and lottery tickets. At one point a good-news call from his wife caused the boy to exclaim, "We won! We won!"

Record producer and songwriter David Foster sat at the piano to sing "The Color of My Love" with a string quartet and instructed the audience to think of it as "Rene singing it to Celine," after cautioning, "I can write 'em and produce 'em but I can't sing for s---."

"He understood the peoples' tastes, and he understood their humanity," Ehrlich said.

— Read more from Mike Weatherford at reviewjournal.com. Contact him at mweatherford@reviewjournal.comand follow @Mikeweatherford on Twitter.