The buzz began before I had even left Montreal. From Jocelyn, the woman who printed my boarding pass, to the chic francophone couple waiting on U.S Customs and Immigration: “Celine. J’vais dimanche et vous?”

The fans are back and streaming to the land of Lost Wages in droves to see Quebec’s most famous entertainer, the lovely Celine Dion. A festive atmosphere on the plane, with parties of 20 and 16, some who have had their tickets since last May. It should be renamed Celine Air.

Ginette Pinsoneault-Dumont has been to Vegas dozens of times. She’s not a gambler, she goes for the shows. She saw Celine’s last spectacle four times. She called it “extraordinaire.”

So why go back now? “Because I heard it was grandiose, different and chic,” Pinsoneault-Dumont said.

She has all Dion’s albums, she has seen the diva at the Bell Centre, and she lays claim to being Dion’s No. 1 fan. “We’re very proud of her,” she said. The ladies and their husbands said they didn’t go to Vegas for the past two years, because Celine wasn’t in residence.

WestJet counter agent Leslie said passenger business dropped off after Christmas, but once Celine returned to Vegas, the flights from Montreal have been jammed. With good reason: this is one hell of a show.

Magnificent. Jaw-dropping. Grandiose yet intimate. Ninety-five minutes of pure entertainment of the highest order. Worth every penny. The girl has the pipes — and the pins, as a series of slinky gowns cut way up to there attest.

The show starts with a video montage of her last World Tour and ends with shots of Nelson and Eddy, her infant twins. Celine gets the first of many standing ovations before she even sings a note, appearing in shimmery silver Armani.

Steve Perry’s “Open Arms” begins and the goosebumps come with the swelling music from her crack 31-piece orchestra, unveiled when a white curtain is whisked away as if by magic.

She brings out all her hits, starting with “Where Does My Heart Beat Now?,” sung to a series of photos of a young Celine as she first appeared on the Carson show.

“Because You Loved Me” has the audience members swaying, and when she hits the high notes, it’s breathtaking. There’s a fab James Bond routine with Celine singing “Nobody Does it Better” and “Live and Let Die” with amazing background graphics.

Dion is playful and enchanting, bantering along about how blessed she feels with her family and her career exactly where she dreamed they’d be.

She sings songs by Billy Joel, Janis Ian, channels Michael Jackson so flawlessly, you’d swear it’s his version of “Man in the Mirror,” and cries doing Jacques Brel’s “Ne me quitte pas,” her only French song of the night.

Her range and powerful voice got quite the test with “Beauty and the Beast,” “All By Myself” and “River Deep, Mountain High” and the theme from Titanic, “My Heart Will Go On,” her encore performance.

They say her husband, Rene Angelil, goes to every show. I have proof. The man himself was sitting in the row behind me, clapping along with the rest of us.

Seven costume changes that I could count in the dizzying fashion display and an amazing duet with holograms of Stevie Wonder and one with herself had the audience gasping.

The chest thumping and other histrionics have been eliminated for the most part, and there were five standing ovations during her extraordinarily entertaining performance. The French word for show is spectacle and this truly was one.

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