Sinister truth about Celine Dion's song All By Myself: Singer's producer reveals bombshell secrets of her 26-year age gap marriage... that he swore not to tell until her husband René died

When Vito Luprano told René Angélil - Celine Dion's husband and longtime mentor - that he intended to write a memoir about their time together, Angélil had just two conditions.

He asked that Luprano send the manuscript to Dion before it was published. And that he wait until Angélil had died.

Angélil passed away five years after that conversation, in January 2016 from throat cancer, and Luprano - who signed Celine Dion's first record company contract in 1986 - insists he honored his wishes.

If that was the case, his recently published memoir, It's All Coming Back To Me, must have made, at times, uncomfortable reading for Dion, who only recently returned to the spotlight following her battle with Stiff Person Syndrome.

'I was 30 years old when I met Celine,' writes Luprano. 'She was 17. We signed her when she turned 18.

'Almost every day for 23 years, I was in the same rooms with Celine and René.'

He was the star's executive producer for 21 albums, helping groom the small-town, French-speaking ingenue into a global superstar.

He was there for her biggest hits including The Power of Love, It's All Coming Back to Me Now, I Drove All Night and My Heart Will Go On.

But he and Angélil - who had been the mastermind behind Dion's career since she was just 12 years old, and he was 38 - often clashed, and the partnership with Luprano eventually ended, unceremoniously, in 2010.

'I needed closure, but René never gave it to me,' he writes, 'so it was up to me to find closure myself.'

Part of that closure undoubtedly came with the writing of this memoir, in which he recalls the giddy highs and tense lows of working with the mercurial, fiercely ambitious, often controlling Angélil.

Much has been written about the 26-year age gap between Dion and the manager who later became her husband.

The pair met when she was just 12 and he sensed a prodigious talent in the young singer. He even mortgaged his house to fund her first album.

Their relationship officially turned romantic when she was 19 and he was 45, but Luprano reveals they were physical with each other much earlier.

'There were signs as far back as 1987, when Celine was 17 years old,' he writes. 'Shared glances, lingering looks, the way their chemistry shifts the room, all the little moments that were too intimate to be anything but love.

'In the studio, she would gaze at René adoringly in a way that contradicted a platonic artist-manager relationship.'

He also disclosed that, when they travelled, Angélil was always sure to book a suite for Dion that had a connecting room - one they could slip in and out of at night without anyone knowing.

'Even when René assured me their relationship was strictly platonic,' he writes, 'something about it never sat right with me… the possessive way he touched her, the way he kept her so close, always within reach, as if under careful control.

'It was unsettling when the romantic nature of their relationship surfaced, like the end of a long, deliberate cover-up. It was like finding out my adult brother was sleeping with the girl next door, sister. It crossed boundaries I couldn't even process.'

Luprano does not doubt the authenticity of Dion's feelings for her manager and mentor - she was head over heels in love. But he writes that he sometimes 'wondered about the purity' of Angélil's motivations.

He recounts one particular conversation during a stressful drive early in Dion's career that hinted at something more sinister and calculating.

'His hands gripped the steering wheel as he told me a story not just for conversation, but to lay down a message,' he writes.

Angélil reminded him of his former client, the French Canadian singer Ginette Reno, who he'd managed in the mid-1970s.

But, much to Angélil's fury, Reno dumped him soon after her first big success, and he never forgave what he saw as the ultimate betrayal.

'She was great, and we were going places,' Angélil told Luprano, 'but within a few months, I lost it all. She abruptly ended our collaboration and handed her career over to her boyfriend, Alain Charbonneau. She fell in love and left me hanging out to dry.'

Luprano suggests that, having been burned so badly, Angélil was determined the same thing would never happen to him again.

'Then came the remark in a serpentine tone that settled eerily into my bones: "But now I have Celine."'

'Nothing could derail his plans for her. All her attention would be on him. If she needed to think out loud, she could think out loud to him. If she needed to vent, she would vent to him. Whatever she needed to fill her up emotionally, he would take care of.'

He writes that Angélil told him: 'It is better for everyone that she does not fall in love with anyone but me.'

'Celine was his second chance,' he continues, 'and he wasn't going to blow it.'

Even Luprano, as Dion's executive producer, rarely spent time alone with her.

'In all these years, believe it or not, Celine had never once asked to share a meal or a coffee with me. We all knew that unless René was present, Celine was off-limits.'

Dion and Angélil married in 1994 and had three children together: son René-Charles in 2001 and twin sons Nelson and Eddy in 2010.

But even once they were married, Luprano maintains Angélil's controlling of his much younger wife continued.

He cites the day they were due to record her number one hit All By Myself.

'That morning, René called to say he wasn't up to being in the studio and asked if I could take Celine,' he recalls.

'It crossed my mind that this was strange and unusual behavior. René never let personal matters interfere with business.'

During the ride, Dion disclosed that the pair had argued, and the fight was weighing heavily on her.

'She was about to record All by Myself, all by herself, and with René not here,' he writes.

'She looked vulnerable, she looked heavy with sadness, like there was a weight bigger than just another argument pulling her down, and she sang as if she was feeling every word of it.'

Then it occurred to him: Angélil had cynically manipulated the situation, arguing with his wife to ensure she delivered a performance full of raw emotion - verging on tears.

'He played her,' writes Luprano. 'And that's the thing with René; did he play Celine so hard that she used real-life angst to record real-life despair?

'When I confronted him, he didn't deny it. He knew his job all right, and he stopped short of nothing, not even creating a fake fight to inflict emotional pain on Celine, so it came through in her recordings.'

However the dynamics played out, Dion and Angélil remained devoted to each other until his death. Dion even took a career break to care for him.

She announced her diagnosis of the incurable autoimmune disorder Stiff Person Syndrome in 2022, after disappearing from the public eye two years earlier.

She only emerged from self-imposed exile in 2024, when she attended a hockey game in Las Vegas.

Her first, much anticipated, performance came a few months later, at the opening of the Paris Olympics in July 2024.

In January this year, she posted a poignant tribute to her husband on what would have been his 84th birthday.

She wrote: 'On your birthday, we celebrate you and our love for you grows every day... You are forever our greatest protector, and your memory continues to guide us...'

The Daily Mail has contacted Dion's representatives for comment. 

It's All Coming Back To Me...: From my humble beginnings to the real story behind Celine Dion's music career by Vito Luprano is out now