By Momar Visaya, Asian Journal
NEW YORK — Charice’s dreams are being realized, one by one, right before our very eyes.
On Monday night, Sept. 15, at the Madison Square Garden, the young singer became the first Filipino performer to sing a duet with Celine Dion, one of the world’s most successful artists in pop music. As of 2007, Ms. Dion has sold over 200 million albums worldwide.
“We have here tonight an incredible young singer that Oprah discovered a while back. If you watched Oprah last week, you know all about her. This young lady’s name is Charice. She’s 16 years old and she’s from the Philippines,” Celine said, as the audience applauded wildly.
Celine, in a rather long spiel, introduced Charice to her hordes of fans.
“Let me tell you, she has a voice that can literally blow the roof of Madison Square Garden and she just might,” the singer said.
With her voice almost breaking, Celine said that the real story was how Charice and her mom “escaped a terrifying experience,” referring to the fact that they had to leave Charice’s violent father to start life on their own.
“Charice vowed to save her mom from a life of desperation and despair. You know, through prayers and dreams and God-given talent, an incredible voice, Charice entered and won every singing contest in her native country and eventually, was noticed by such influential people such as Oprah and Oprah took her under her wings and David Foster joined in,” Celine continued.
This historic moment for the Filipina performer happened in between Celine’s fourth or fifth song, and she said that she doesn’t usually cut her sets but tonight was something special.
On last week’s Oprah, an entire episode was devoted to Charice and as a surprise to her, Celine invited her to sing a duet with her in the New York leg of her Taking Chances world tour.
While waiting for the show to start, Charice created quite the ripple when she was accompanied to her seat, with Oprah’s cameras following her. The audience screamed and called her. Charice waved back to them.
It was almost half an hour into the show when Charice’s moment arrived.
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