***1/2 Celine Dion

S'IL SUFFISAIT D'AIMER

(Sony)

Dion's second CD produced in France (by Jean-Jacques Goldman, who also commanded D'eux, her first) displays more facets of her artistry than the US CDs. The focus is different from the love-forever steadfastness ballads of her English-language work. In France, Dion offers orchestrated blues, operatic intimacy, and righteous soul music, idioms on which the major French variété stars of the last three decades -- France Gall, Jane Birkin, and Myléne Farmer -- founded their mega-careers. She makes these genres her own. The delicate forcefulness she imparts to "Zora sourit" and "Je chanterai," for example, soars more brightly than the sublimely dusky soprano of France Gall. Her vulnerability in "Je crois toi," her power in "L'abandon," and the comforting sureness of the CD's title song have an earthy realism unlike Farmer's cool and horny dreaminess. Jane Birkin's sad-song oeuvre has nothing as gritty as "Terre" and "Tous les blues sont écrits pour toi," power blues in which Dion rides high and joyously.

Goldman's arrangements never slip into cliché or settle for a quick hook; every measure of his music cuts against expectations, isolating Dion's singing to bring a melody to life. True, she never reaches, in this ladylike session, the youthful stridency and blissful rhythm that distinguish 1991's Dion chante Plamondon, her rockingest CD. But Goldman's polish becomes her. For a true Dion fan, this is, like Plamondon, a must-own CD.

-- Michael Freedberg