Renard scoops Kent's 'madcap' opera compendium

Renard Press has landed Opera Obscura: A Wholly Improbable Selection of Impossible Opera written and illustrated Peter Kent.

Publisher Will Dady acquired world English rights to the large format coffee-table paperback, which contains 90 colour illustrations and 25 stories and will be marketed as a gift book. 

"Many musical and theatrical traditions walk the very narrow path between the sublime and the ridiculous, but perhaps none more so than opera, which, while maintaining an elegant reputation, makes a show out of princes making romantic speeches to soft fruit, noses being accidentally cut off and woodpeckers performing wedding ceremonies," the synopsis reads.

"Opera Obscura is a beautifully illustrated collection that contributes 25 brand new impossibly madcap operas to the canon of magnificent absurdities, along with the intricate blueprints for several incredible opera houses and information on of a whole range of almost unbelievably incredible instruments."

Kent is the author and illustrator of almost 30 books, and a fan of opera. The book will publish on 28th September. 

"I’m delighted that Peter Kent’s beautiful collection Opera Obscura is joining the Renard shelves," publisher Dady said. "Although opera is considered by many a serious and elitist art form, behind the music and the elegant veil are a whole host of hilarious madcap stories celebrating the extraordinary and stretching belief to breaking point. 

"Peter Kent’s collection takes this idea and runs with it, contributing 25 bonkers new operas to the canon. The real joy of the collection beyond its beauty and wit is that it assumes nothing, and will be just as entertaining to loungers in the long grass at Glyndebourne as to those who have yet to make it to Covent Garden."