It was to be a moment of transcendent harmony — a pacifist version of France’s bloodthirsty national anthem performed in a village hall by a folk singer with a 180-strong amateur choir.
Instead, Graeme Allwright, a New Zealander who made France his home when he fell in love with a woman half a century ago, has been accused of bringing La Marseillaise into disrepute.
Jean-François Douard, the Mayor of Lagord on the outskirts of La Rochelle in west France, where the concert is due to be held on March 26, is trying to stop locals from joining the peace-and-love adaptation of the anthem.
“There are things on which I won’t compromise,” he told the Sud Ouest newspaper. “La Marseillaise is sacred.”
He said that Allwright had produced an “errant version” and added that he did not want “to hear this song in my district. I may be an old fart, but that’s the way it is.”
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Mr Douard has ordered the choir to stay silent and banned organisers from distributing the lyrics to the audience, as usually happens at Allwright’s concerts. The folk artist responded by deciding to sing on his own.
Allwright, who became known for adapting Leonard Cohen songs into French, told The Times: “I wrote the song in 2005 and I’ve sung it over 100 times since then and I’ve never had a problem.”
He said that he was considering legal action against Mr Douard. “He used the word devoyé (errant), and that is a very strong word in French.”
Allwright, 84, said that the Mayor’s reaction illustrated a “general rise of the extreme right in Europe and that’s very worrying”. He said that La Marseillaise, written in 1792 by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle for revolutionary forces and taken up by volunteer units from Marseille — has become an anachronism. “The words are very bloody,” he said.
Allwright suggested to President Sarkozy that France should adopt his version, but his suggestion was rejected.