Baroque and deliciously funny, this third book in The Cornish Trilogy shows Robertson Davies at his very considerable best. Hoffmann’s dictum, “the lyre of Orpheus opens the door of the underworld,” seems to be all too true-especially when the long-hidden secrets of Francis Cornish himself are finally revealed. Complications both practical and emotional arise: the gypsy in Maria’s blood rises with a vengeance Darcourt stoops to petty crime and various others indulge in perjury, blackmail, and other unsavory pursuits. Hoffmann’s unfinished opera Arthur of Britain, or The Magnanimous Cuckold and the scholarly priest Simon Darcourt finds himself charged with writing the libretto. The grumpy, grimy, extraordinarily talented music student Hulda Schnakenburg is commissioned to complete E.T.A. The Cornish Foundation is thriving under the directorship of Arthur Cornish when Arthur and his beguiling wife, Maria Theotoky, decide to undertake a project worthy of Francis Cornish– connoisseur, collector, and notable eccentric–whose vast fortune endows the Foundation. There is an important decision to be made. Available as an eBook for the first time. Hailed as a literary masterpiece, Robertson Davies' The Cornish Trilogy comes to a brilliant conclusion in The Lyre of Orpheus.
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