PARIS: Paris Olympics organisers stated on Sunday (Jul 28) they had been “actually sorry” if any offence was brought on by their daring and quirky opening ceremony whereas denying any intention to “disrespect” faith after complaints from French bishops.
Some Catholic teams and French bishops have condemned what they noticed as “scenes of derision and mockery of Christianity” within the parade on Friday choreographed by theatre director Thomas Jolly.
Criticism has centered on a scene involving dancers, drag queens and a DJ in poses that recalled depictions of the Final Supper, the ultimate meal Jesus is alleged to have taken together with his apostles.
“Clearly there was by no means an intention to point out disrespect to any non secular group,” Paris 2024 spokeswoman Anne Descamps advised reporters on Sunday.
“If individuals have taken any offence, we’re in fact actually, actually sorry,” she added.
Jolly, 42, denied taking inspiration from the Final Supper in his almost four-hour manufacturing, which occurred in driving rain alongside the River Seine.
The scene, supposed to advertise tolerance of various sexual and gender identities, additionally featured French actor Philippe Katerine, who appeared on a silver serving dish, virtually bare and painted blue.
He was meant to be Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and pleasure, who was the daddy of Sequana, the goddess of the River Seine.
“The thought was to do a giant pagan social gathering linked to the gods of Olympus,” Jolly advised the BFM channel on Sunday.
“You will by no means discover in my work any need to mock or denigrate anybody. I wished a ceremony that brings individuals collectively, that reconciles, but additionally a ceremony that affirms our Republican values of liberty, equality and fraternity,” he added.
In one of many different hanging moments of the ceremony, a lady holding a bloodied severed head and supposed to be executed French queen Marie Antoinette appeared in a window of the Conciergerie, a constructing the place she was imprisoned after the 1789 French Revolution.
She was later guillotined alongside together with her husband Louis XVI.
“Actually we weren’t glorifying this instrument of loss of life which is the guillotine,” Jolly added.
