A Curious Invitation present London Month of the Dead
LA NONNE SANGLANTE (The Bloody Nun)
A candlelit concert inspired by the Gothic horror story, featuring excerpts from Gounod’s opera in Kensal Green Cemetery with GOTHIC OPERA
Performances on 16th & 17th October 2021 at 7:00 pm

Enter the cemetery at sundown and proceed at your peril to this candlelit concert amidst the headstones of Kensal Green.

Charles Gounod's opera La Nonne Sanglante (The Bloody Nun) is based on the 1796 novel The Monk written by the English Gothic horror writer Matthew Lewis when he was still in his teens. The Monk was considered so scandalous on its publication that an injunction was secured to restrain its sale. However it was praised by figures such as Lord Byron, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the Marquis de Sade.

The Bloody Nun then became Gounod’s first opera. It opened at the Paris Opéra in 1854 but immediately aroused controversy. The director of the Opéra was fired and his replacement François-Louis Crosnierhas denounced The Bloody Nun as “filth” and closed it down after just eleven performances. Since then it has only been revived twice.

Gothic Opera presents excerpts from this remarkable ghostly opera, which they are staging this Halloween as a UK premiere, along with a selection of carefully chosen other repertoire inspired by the story of the Bloody Nun.

Tickets £20 including a delightful Victorian punch and a 20% donation toward a host of restoration projects at Kensal Green Cemetery.

GOTHIC OPERA
Gothic Opera was founded in 2019 by sopranos Beatrice de Larragoiti, Charlotte Osborn and Alice Usher. It specialises in performances of rarely-seen operatic works that take inspiration from the uncanny atmosphere of the Gothic and supernatural. The company launched onto the London scene with two critically acclaimed and innovative productions, Der Vampyr and Bluebeard’s Castle.

Kensal Green Cemetery