Paris Olympics organisers said Sunday they were “really sorry” if any offence was caused by their daring and quirky opening ceremony while denying any intention to “disrespect” religion after complaints from French bishops.
Some Catholic groups and French bishops have condemned “scenes of derision and mockery of Christianity” in the parade on Friday choreographed by theatre director Thomas Jolly.
Criticism has focused on a scene involving dancers, drag queens and a DJ in poses that recalled depictions of the Last Supper, the final meal Jesus is said to have taken with his apostles.
“Clearly there was never an intention to show disrespect to any religious group,” Paris 2024 spokeswoman Anne Descamps told reporters on Sunday.
“If people have taken any offence, we are of course really, really sorry,” she added.
Jolly, 42, denied taking inspiration from the Last Supper in his nearly four-hour production, which took place in driving rain along the River Seine.
The scene also featured French actor Philippe Katerine, who appeared on a silver serving dish, almost naked and painted blue.
He was meant to be Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and pleasure, who was father of Sequana, the goddess of the River Seine.
“The idea was to do a big pagan party linked to the gods of Olympus,” Jolly told the BFM channel on Sunday.
“You’ll never find in my work any desire to mock or denigrate anyone. I wanted a ceremony that brings people together, that reconciles, but also a ceremony that affirms our Republican values of liberty, equality and fraternity,” he added.
In one of the other striking moments of the ceremony, a woman holding a bloodied severed head and intended to be executed French queen Marie-Antoinette appeared in a window of the Conciergerie, a building where she was imprisoned after the 1789 French Revolution.
She was later guillotined along with her husband Louis XVI.
“Certainly we were not glorifying this instrument of death which is the guillotine,” Jolly added.
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